Planechase: Pursuit
by Ria Harris
Summary: A Multiverse-Spanning, Crossover, Fanfiction Adventure. Based on Magic: the Gathering; Crossing over into multiple fandoms.
1. Christmas

**00.1 Prologue**

**Christmas**

Dor was born in a town called Christmas.

She lived there with her parents until she was four years old, and they were happy. Not that there weren't dangers to living in Christmas. The sun rarely shone, everyone always told the truth, and, from time to time, aliens attacked.

One day Dor's parents woke her up early, bundled her in boots, coat, mittens and scarf, and they all walked to a small hill outside town. The night was clear, a rare occasion warrenting such a trek. Stars sparkled in the void, some of them easing across the sky like ships circling the planet. She walked between her parents each hand in one of theirs, reveling in the cold, the quiet, the companionship. Her father smelled of book ink, her mother of frankincense.

They reached the crest of a hill outside of town with a handful of other families. Dor waved at Jon and Susan, a brother and sister she went to school with. The adults exchanged small, quite greetings, none wanting to spoil the mood of quiet anticipation. Dor held tight to her parents' hands.

As the darkness of night began to lighten to grey, the hushed conversation fell silent. As the distant whips of clouds over the mountains began to grow pink, Dor held her breath. And when the sun broke the horizon, a vast sign sifted through the vale the held Christmas.

The reverential awe was shattered by skttrchz of teleportation. An army of blue and grey armored men with dome-shaped heads and plasma rifles appeared in the field on the other side of the hill—aliens.

The people on the hilltop scattered, shouting.

"Get Dorothy back to the town, I'll hold them off. Tell him there's been another attack."

"Come with us. Let the church handle it."

"That's a full platoon of sontarans. The church will need help and he's not here at the moment. I am."

"But…"

"Go. Keep Dor safe."

Dor was picked up by her father. The scent of book ink grew strong. The scent of frankincense faded. The sound of plasma rifles burst through the air and a bright flash of light lit them all in stark relief.

"Mommy!"

"She'll be fine," her father assured her. "Your mother's an angle. It'll take more than a few sontarans to phase her.

The reached the toymaker's tower even as the alarm was sounded. Bells all over town began to ring. Those who hadn't woken early to see the dawn on a rare, clear morning were roused. The defences would be mounted. Her father pushed open the door to the tower and shouted.

"Sontarans!"

"So I see." The toymaker was an old man with white hair who leaned on a cane. He came out of his tower with grim cconfidence, a contrast to the jolly, goofy, kind-hearted demeanor she was used to.

"But Ruth seems to be handeling them just fine without me."

"Please," said her father. "You're going to help her, aren't you?"

"Is that real magic?" the toymaker asked. "What is she, Noah? What are you?"

"We don't have time for this."

The toymaker lifted his cane and thumped it into her father's chest, his kind old face furrowed in a frown.

"Don't tell me about time!" he thumped his cane into her father's chest again, harder. Her father grunted. Dor gasped and stepped between her father and the toymaker, tears blurring her vision.

The toymaker stepped back, surprised, then smiled at her. But it was a sad smile. He knelt with a crackling of knees.

"Hello, Dorothy. Dorothy Alice Wendy, what a perfectly wonderful name."

Dorothy turned and hid her face against her father's coat.

"Don't you worry, Dorothy. Your mum's gonna be fine."

* * *

That night, her mother didn't come home, and when the toymaker came to visit, her father sent her to bed. Instead, she sat at the top of the stairs, in the shadows, and listened.

"You lied to me, Noah," the toymaker said.

"We didn't. We just needed a safe place to hide. You were the best protector I could think of."

"You've put everyone here at risk."

Her father sighed. "You're right."

"You can't stay, Noah. I'm sorry, I really am, but you've broken the truce. No alien technology. That bauble of yours isn't just alien, it's transdimensional. That shouldn't be possible, not anymore. The Church of Silence is demanding you leave, and I have no choice." The voice of the old toymaker was sad. Dor hated to hear him sad.

"All right then. We'll leave in the morning. It takes a bit of preparation."

There were several moments of silence. Dor held her breath.

"You should have told me."

"If I'd told you, you woulnd't have let us stay."

Several more moments of silence stretched through the dim, warm, cozyness of their little house.

"Ruth didn't come back."

"No. She left to draw them off."

"The sontarans? They're incapable of interdimensional travel."

"Not the sontarans."

"Ah. I would help if I could."

"You've done more than enough. Thank you."

* * *

Dor and her father left Christmas and moved into a small apartment in a big city where it never snowed. She came to understand that she had made it all up, that none of it had been real, that her memories of aliens, and truth-fields, and snow-shrouded Christmas were nothing but gossamer nonsense. She came to understand that when her father told her that her mother had been an angel and had needed to go home, what he meant was that she had died. She came to understand that the real world was filled not with snowy truths and frightful adventures, but smoggy doldrums and concrete mundania. Her memories of Christmass faded to half-remembered dreams and midsummer fog.

Dor resisted mundania with books and movies and games.

The walls of their apartment were lined with bookshelves filled to overflowing. Their television was too big for their living room. Their kitchen table was home to more board games than meals. Dor and her father rode circuit through Valdemar, attended Hogwarts, and fought for mutant rights. They rescued the Mushroom Kingdom, settled Catan, and fought in the War of the Lions. They studied the bending arts, and explored Third Earth, and rebelled against the Galactic Empire.

On her thirteenth birthday, Dor awoke quietly, a small smile and wistful tear all that remained of a dream of wandering the snowy streets of Christmas with her mother.

For breakfast, her father made scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa. Dor weathered the breakfast graciously, enjoying the spicy, cheesy, eggyness, resisting the childish urge to ask for her present straight away. Then she helped her father clear away the dishes.

"It's your birthday," he objected.

"So I can help clean the dishes if I want to," she replied.

And, finally, her patience was rewarded with a small metal box.

"It was your mother's," he said in the quiet voice he reserved for talking about his late wife.

Inside was a silver charm bracelet adorned with a small emerald, pearl, and sapphire. Her father clasped it about her wrist.

"She used to tell me it was her good luck charm. She wanted you to have it when you became a woman."

Dor scoffed so that she wouldn't sniffle. "I'm thirteen, dad, hardly an adult."

He smiled at her, his quiet smile matching his quiet tone. "There's so much of her in you."

Dor bit her lip.

But before they could dissolve into maudlin memories, her father stood and fixed her with a stern look. "Dorothy Alice Wendy, today is your thirteenth birthday. First is book shopping, then to the arcade, and then an afternoon at the movies. Any objections?"

"I have to go to school."

"'Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,'" he quoted.

Dor grinned.

* * *

That summer, the evil stepmother arrived.

Dor was surprised when her father began to date the severe, evil woman who hated books and movies and games. She was stunned when they were married a month later. She was struck to silence when he fell ill within the week and was dead a month after that.


	2. Bad Moon

**00.2 ****Prologue**

**Bad Moon**

Dor walked home under a dirty, yellow moon in a slowly darkening sky. Mid-autumn made for early evenings, and Dor had spent at much time at the school library as she could before Mr. C. had kicked her out. Normally she liked autumn, normall she like full moons, normally she liked going home after school. But her life was no longer anything like normal.

A few minutes later, she stood in the hallway outside the small apartment, fiddling with her keys, staring at the worn, red and gold patterned carpet. The hallway carpet hadn't been replaced since she had moved in as a little girl. In spots it was threadbare. In spots it bore cigarette burns. In spots it smelled of vomit. But still she fiddled, hesitating to open the door to what had been home for nearly a decade.

Inside, no longer resembled home. The bookshelves had been ripped down and the books thrown away. The television had been broken and the surround sound speakers smashed. The games and been scattered and destroyed.

School provided a reprieve from the evil stepmother's madness. At school, she could lose herself in academics and forget that her home was no longer her home, that her father was no longer there for her. At school she could pretend that when she went home, it would be as she remembered. Standing in the hallway she could believe the detritus of destruction that littered the apartment was only a nightmare, that when she opened the door all would be as it was.

With a deep breath to stiffen her resolve, Dor unlocked her apartment and slipped in as quietly as she could, stepping over scattered chess pieces, a shattered DVD of _Field of Dreams_, and the remains of a classic NES. She could hear the evil stepmother raving in the kitchen, and she tried to get to her room without being noticed.

"I have looked. I've torn the place apart. It's not here. Your divination must be wrong," the evil stepmother growled.

"Divination?" Dor whispered. Despite herself, she paused to listen.

"No I haven't asked her. You told me to be subtle. If you'd just let me tor…" The evil stepmother made an inarticulate sound. "I'm not suited for this. Why shouldn't I just kill her and be done with it?"

Dor hurried to her bedroom, dropped her backpack, and sat gingerly on her bed. The evil stepmother had destroyed her room as she'd destroyed the apartment, ripped posters from the walls, books from their shelves, clothes from her dresser, but Dor had cleaned as best she could, so her room was the only clean space left. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, rubbing at her arms, sore and speckled with bruises. Her whole body was marked with bruises.

"I can't stay here," she said quietly. "She's mad. She's going to kill me. I have to get away."

But where would she run to? She had no friends, no family, no one to go to. Her friends at school had been ephemeral, none staying for more than the length of a school year. They all found her odd. She preferred the worlds of books.

Her reverie was burst when the evil stepmother opened the door with a slam.

Dor jumped to her feet and put her back to the wall. Her heart raced against the false, saccharine smile on the evil woman's face.

"Why so jumpy, dear?"

"What do you want with me?" Dor demanded, surprised by her own audacity.

The evil stepmother smiled. "Tsk tsk, you oughtn't talk to your mother that way. I'll have to punish you, you know." And her smile turned from false to anticipatory, her eyes wide and manic.

"I heard you talking," Dor said, even as she pressed her back harder into the wall, wishing she could slip through, like Shadowcat. "You're looking for something. But whatever it is, clearly it's not here. Just leave me alone."

"Eavesdropping now, sweetie? Did your father bring you up Dimir?"

"Dimir?"

The slap came fast, too fast for Dor to follow.

For a moment, there was nothing. And then, beyond the nothing, there was everything. She felt the pull of the multiverse and reached for it, but it lay just beyond, a whisper at the end of a dream.

Dor cried out as she came back to herself, her head ringing and her vision blurred. She staggered and fell onto her bed. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the evil stepmother was upon her, one hand in her hair, the other slapping at her, striking her back, hips and thighs.

"It's not here!" Dor screamed through the pain. "Leave me alone!"

The evil stepmother laughed, high-pitched and manic. She put her knee in Dor's back, then jerked at Dor's jeans, tearing them, pulling them roughly over Dor's hips. Thus exposed, only her thin panties for protection, the evil stepmother spanked her. The evil woman's palm was like a flat of steel striking her again and again, shrinking Dor's consciousness to nothing else. All she knew was the relentless, fiery pain that resounded over and over, radiating from her hips to her shoulders to her knees to her head and banishing all else but the high-pitched laughter.

When the evil stepmother left, Dor sobbed into her pillow. She sobbed because she'd been spanked cruelly and unjustly, because her mother and father were dead and gone, because she was trapped and frightened. But while her body sobbed and squirmed and squeezed into a tight ball of fear and shame, a part of her mind focused on a word, a word the evil stepmother had said to her.

Dimir.

It was an odd sort of word, a made up word, a word that meant something to Dor. It was the word for the clandestine guild of spies and thieves on Ravnica, a fictional plane of existence in the game of _Magic_. It was a fictional organization that only someone who played _Magic_ would know. But perhaps she'd misheard, perhaps the evil stepmother had said…

But nothing else made sense. Dor was certain she hadn't misheard. Did the evil stepmother know the word because she was familiar with the game? Had she used it to mock Dor for liking the game? But it had sounded like a figure a speech, like something one said as a matter of course.

Slowly, Dor got up.

She didn't know for how long she'd laid on her bed, mulling the question while trying to ignore the pain, but it was dark outside her window, moonlight casting everything in a dingy, yellow light. She stood and went to the window, craning to look up at the baleful yellow moon in the velvet night sky.

In the living room, the evil stepmother was busy tearing through the trash she'd made of what had once been Dor's treasures, but Dor found herself unafraid. She slipped off her shoes and let her torn jeans slip over her feet. Quietly, she closed the door to her room. She nearly sat on her bed but thought better of it, her backside throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She stood quietly in the center of her room, the only room in the apartment uncluttered by the evil stepmother's madness, and allowed herself to consider the impossible.

What if the evil stepmother knew of House Dimir because the Dimir were real? What if she had been raving about failed divination because divination was real? What if Dor's memories of living in a town called Christmas had been real? What if her father had meant it when he'd said her mother was an angel?

"No," she whispered. "That's insane, it's nonsense. I need to focus on getting away from here."

Dor removed her school books and supplies from her backpack. It wasn't much space to pack for running away, but she didn't have much. In a hidden cubby, behind the loose baseboard under her bed, was where Dor had hidden her mother's charm bracelet. Of all her treasures, this was the one she feared to lose the most. She retrieved it now and clasped it around her wrist.

The evil stepmother screamed with excitement.

_This is it,_ Dor whispered. _This is what she wanted, and now she knows I have it. I have to get out of here. I have to get out. Now!_

Blindly, she snatched up her backpack and went for the door, but she could hear the evil stepmother raging down the hallway. She cast about and her eyes lit upon the window.

The apartment was on the fifth floor and the fire escape rattled as she clambered onto it. She was nearly through the window when the evil stepmother burst into her room and caught her by the ankle.

"Get in here, you little bitch."

Dor kicked out reflexively.

The struggle lasted only a few moments. When the evil stepmother let go, Dor stumbled hard against the railing. The wind was punched from her chest and she doubled over, the momentum sending her over the railing. Stunned she couldn't scream; she could only stare at the fat, yellow moon overhead as she plummeted to the pavement below.

Her mother's bracelet grew warm against her wrist, her shoulders flared with pain, and her world exploded into mind-numbing, sense-shattering, body-crushing chaos.


	3. Equestria

**01. Equestria**

The first thing Dor noticed was she wasn't dead. She was sore, she was shaken, but she was not dead. She spent several moments trying to determine how best to confirm her living status, as though breathing, hurting, and thinking weren't enough. Eventually, she decided to open her eyes.

Her gaze was met by a pair of large, deep purple eyes set in a delicate equine face covered with soft, lavender fur and topped with a spiral horn. Dor recognized her immediately. She let out a high, sharp scream. The unicorn snorted in surprise and backed up several paces. Dor sat up and blinked her bleary eyes in an attempt to coax the truth from them. Despite her attempt, the purple unicorn remained.

"You're Twilight Sparkle," Dor said, not believing the words as they whispered between her lips.

"You know me?"

The incongruity of an equine mouth producing a language she could understand was nothing compared to recognizing the voice and the eyebrow quirked in question.

"Of course I know you. You're the librarian of Ponyville, favored student of Princess Celestia, and embodiment of the Element of Magic. You have a dragon assistant named Spike and a pet owl named Owlowiscious. You're one of the Mane Six."

"The main what now?"

Dor began to shiver, her vision began to darken, and her inner voice would not stop telling her _this can't be true, this can't be true, this can't be true. _

Her descent into shock was interrupted by sudden enveloping warmth. For several blissful moments, she felt as though she was melting. When her thoughts were coherent again, she realized she'd been wrapped in a warm blanket and plied with a hot drink. Dor sniffed at the tea, it smelled of chamomile and honey. She took a couple of sips. It made her feel better.

Twilight Sparkle sat on her haunches nearby, smiling at her gently.

"Let's start over," said the unicorn. "What's your name?"

"Dor."

Again the unicorn's eyebrow quirked in question. "Door?"

"It's short for Dorothy. Actually, it's short for Dorothy Alice Wendy. My father loved books."

Twilight Sparkle smiled. "I'm rather fond of books myself."

Dor looked around herself at Golden Oaks, a library housed in the bole of an enormous tree. Books of varying sizes and colors were neatly packed into shelves that covered every bit of wall space. At the top of a set of stairs that had been seamlessly worked into the shelving system, was Twilight Sparkle's bedroom. It was all so familiar to her; she'd seen it time after time on television.

"I have to ask a few qeustions," said Twilight Sparkle her tone placating. She watche Dor carefully as though afraid the girl might fall apart.

Dor nodded.

"Okay, first. How did you get here? Because, you see, Princess Celestia and I put a powerful shield on the library. No one should be able to teleport inside."

"I don't know. The last thing I remember was… was falling."

Twilight Sparkel nodded as though that made perfect sense. "Next question. What are you?" She smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, that's rude, but you don't look like anypony I've ever seen or read about. And I've read a lot."

"Oh." Dor laughed, relaxing even though a corner of her mind shrieked at the impossibility of it all. "No, I don't suppose there are any humans on Equestria. Except, what about when you went through the mirror and…" She trailed off. _Equestira Girls _the episode where Twilight Sparkle entered a parallel world and became a human, happened after she gained her wings and this Twilight didn't have wings.

"Mirror?"

"Um… nevermind." She didn't know how or whether to tell Twilight about _My Little Pony_. How would she respond to the knowledge that her world was fictional in Dor's. Maybe she'd think it was fascinating. Maybe she'd freak out. Dor knew which she'd do. As it was, she was holding freaking out at bay with the help of warm tea and a blanket.

"All right. Now, there's something I need to tell you. When you appeared, you were unconscious, and like I said, no one should be able to teleport into the library. So I contacted the Princess of Equestria. I hope you understand."

Dor nodded. "Certainly."

Twilight Sparkle smiled. "When she writes back, perhaps she'll have a suggestion about how to send you home. I'm sure you're anxious to get back."

Dor felt her heart stumble. The thought of being within arm's reach of the evil stepmother was terrifying. "Not really."

"You don't want to go home?"

Dor hesitated, but she'd adored Twilight Sparkle and the Mane Six since she was a little girl. She felt she could trust the gentle unicorn with anything. So she told the tale of her evil stepmother, her father's sudden death, and the chaos that followed. She spared none of the ugly details, going so far as to pull aside the blanket and show off her new bruises.

"So, if it's all the same to you, I'll not be going back, no. I don't know how, but maybe I could be useful to you, or I could get a job at Sweet Apple Acres, or something." The more she thought on it, the more she liked the idea of making a home for herself on Equestria, in Ponyville.

Twilight Sparkle smiled at her. "Of course you don't have to go back if you don't want to."

Dor smiled back.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions while we wait for the princess' reply?" Twilight asked.

Dor shrugged. "Why not?"

"Excellent. So, do humans often wear clothes? What do you eat? What's your favorite book? When do humans get their cutie mark?"

Dor answered the questions as best she could. She described human culture, making sure to explain that there were many cultures on her world. She described her favorite foods: macaroni and cheese, chocolate ice cream, and homegrown tomatoes.

"As for a favorite book, well, there's too many to choose," said Dor.

Twilight Sparkle's eyes widened as she nodded. "I know! I love so many that I can't…"

"Twilight?" A short, purple dragon with green spikes and underbelly poked his head into the room to interrupt. It was Twilight's assistant, Spike.

Dor blushed and pulled the blanket a little closer. She'd fallen out the window wearing only a t-shirt, panties, and socks. In front of Twilight Sparkle, it hadn't mattered, afterall, ponies went around without clothes all the time. But Spike was a boy.

"Silly," she chided herself quietly. But still.

"Yes Spike?" Twilight asked.

"Princess Celestia wrote you back." He came further into the room, proffering a scroll.

Twilight Sparkle turned her attention to the note, which now hung in front of her, suspended on unicorn magic. Her delicate equine features creased in a slight frown.

"Princess Celestia says that your appearance wasn't teleportation, but planeswalking. Does that mean anything to you, Dor?"

Dor thought about the Magic cards she'd collected until the evil stepmother hand thrown them out.

"Yeah. There's a game, back home, about dueling wizards who can travel between planes of existence. They're called planeswalkers."

"But, you said it's a game," objected Spike. "As in not real. Right?"

"That's another thing," said Dor. She took a deep breath before plunging on. "Where I come from, you two, Ponyville, even Princess Celestia, you're all fictional. Which, considering I've apparently convinced myself to accept your existence doesn't speak to highly of my sanity."

But Twilight Sparkle looked speculative rather than incredulous. "Spike, Star Swirl the Bearded wrote a book on the possibilities of a multiverse."

"On it," said Spike, but he paused. "Oh, uh, before I forget, you dropped this." From a nearby shelf, he withdrew her backpack and handed it to her.

Dor took the pack and smiled at the diminuitive dragon, who blushed and went to work searching the shelves, muttering to himself.

"So, you don't think I'm crazy?" Dor asked Twilight.

"I've seen weirder. On the other hand, having your delusion confirmed by your hallucination isn't necessarily a good thing." She smiled and winked.

Dor laughed and felt much of the tension she'd held on to since her father's death melt away. Twilight Sparkle, the unicorn librarian of a cartoon she'd loved for years, was joking around with her, treating her like a friend. She felt good here. She felt safe and protected. She hugged her backpack reflexively and was surprised by the feel of a hard, book-shaped object within. She'd been certain she'd emptied it and there hadn't been time to pack.

Spike suddenly belched and the room was lit with a moment of green fire. "A letter from the princess," he announced.

Dor took the moment to look in her backpack to find a slim, white binder. She withdrew it. It was cool and clean and smooth, so much like the ones she'd had, but different in a way she couldn't describe. By its heft, she could tell the plastic sheets inside were filled. It felt right in her hands, like a book slipping into its proper place on a shelf. She flipped it open to the first page and found a six-pocket sleeve filled with grey-scale Magic cards without text or art, except the one in the upper left; it was an artifact card named _Mother's Bracelet_, but there was no art and no text, like a preview card being revealed a bit at a time.

Dor looked up as Twilight spoke.

"Princess Celestia says there's another one like you, a planeswalker, who's just appeared outside of Ponyville. She wants me to check it out."

"I'll go with you," said Dor, a flutter of excitement at her chest. "Maybe he can tell me how I got here."

She had escaped her evil stepmother and stepped into another world, another plane of existence. What other favoriate worlds might she be able to visit? And what luck that she could meet an experienced planeswalker so soon? Dor slipped the binder into the backpack and the backpack over her shoulders before wrapping the blanket around her and standing.

The three approached the door just as a bolt of lightning lit the night sky and thunder rumbled through the library. They froze for a moment, startled.

"I th-think I'll stay here," Spike said nervously.

"Oh, Spike, it's just a thunderstorm," Twilight said.

Dor wasn't so certain. She suddenly had a bad feeling about who the new planeswalker would be. She wanted to tell Twilight Sparkle to leave the door closed, to call for help, but her throat tightened with fear, and she couldn't speak.

Twilight opened the door, and they found a tall, slender figure standing in the town square, bathed in moonlight, waiting for them. No one else was in evidence. There were no clouds in the sky. Dor felt a thrill of dread.

"That's her," said Dor. "My stepmother."

"Give me the bracelet, brat!" screamed the woman. And without waiting for an answer, she raised her hand. A moment later, a blinding bolt of lightning leapt from her palm.

Dor felt the hair on her arms begin to rise and tasted metal on the air. But Twilight Sparkle leapt into the line of fire, and like a blaster bolt off a jedi's blade she deflected the lightning bolt with her alicorn.

"Interfering creature!" screeched the evil stepmother as her hands began to glow with power. She threw a javelin of flame at the unicorn. Twilight blinked out of existence and back again several feet away. The evil stepmother hurled an axe of lava and Twilight dodged it the same way. She followed up her quick teleportation with a beam of purple magical energy that struck the evil stepmother in the chest and threw her across the town square.

All around them the denizens of Ponyville were waking up, turning on their lights, and peering from their windows into the square, alerted by the noise.

"She's here for me," Dor said. "I've put everyone here in danger."

The evil stepmother staggered to her feet, gestured, and shouted. Dor could feel the magic shaping the æther in a goblinoid creature. Dor recognized its large luminous eyes, long hooked nose, and dripping red hair—a redcap from Shadowmoor. It appeared at Twilight's flank, it's wicked blade raised to strike, but Twilight Sparkle reacted quickly, blasting it with the same attack she'd used against the evil stepmother.

"But it's got persist," Dor remembered quietly.

The evil stepmother slashed at the unicorn with her hand and a blade of darkness cut through the night air. At the same time, the redcap scrambled to its feet, taking up its blade and threatening the unicorn from behind.

Twilight reared and a magic shield shimmered into existence just in time to dissipate the magical attack, but she could not turn in time to deal with the redcap. She would be impaled by the frightful goblinoid

Dor wanted to do something, anything, to defend the kind-hearted unicorn, a hero of her childhood, but she was too far away.

Then she felt her mother's bracelet grown warm against her wrist. She pointed at the redcap, letting instinct take her, and swirling white, blue and green energy sprang from the bracelet at the creature, warping the space around it, banishing it back to the æther.

Twilight gave her a grateful look. Then she turned her full attention on the evil stepmother. The unicorn deflected a brief shock of electricity, blinked past a flaming skull, then shouted a brief phrase Dor didn't understand. A flash of light, then the evilstepmother was traped in a bubble of magic not unlike an _Oblivion Ring_.

Dor hurried to Twilight Sparkle's side where the evil stepmother was already putting cracks in the sphere with wild strikes of lightening and darkness.

"She's after me and this," said Dor, holding up her wrist and showing off the bracelet. "I didn't know, honestly. I didn't mean to put you in danger."

"It's not your fault," Twilight Sparkle said, her voice strained under the pressure of holding the magic shield. Her alicorn glowed and flared.

"If I leave, perhaps she'll follow me."

"Seems to me you got here by accident," Twilight Sparkle said. "Do you know how to leave?"

"No. But I could try."

Twilight frowned, but she nodded. "Good luck, Dorothy Alice Wendy. I'll hold her as long as I can. If my friends get here in time, we'll give her a taste of the Elements of Harmony."

"Thank you, Twilight."

"If you can, come back some time, I'd like to talk books with you."

Dor took several steps away and looked at her mother's bracelet: silver links adorned with a sapphire, a pearl, and an emerald. It had felt warm twice now, once when she'd fallen from the fire escape and appeared in Ponyville, and once when she'd banished the redcap. And as she focused on it, it felt warm again. Years of reading novels and playing games had honed her imaginative creativity; she imagined getting away from the curse-screeching, lightning-throwing, crazy woman who'd pursued her from Earth to Equestria.

And, quite suddenly, her whole body was suffused with a tingling power, her vision and hearing went fuzzy, her breathing tightened. Then her mind exploded into a billion crystalline needles of pain, and she slipped, as though falling through a window, into chaos.

* * *

**Unicorn Prodigy **1UU

Creature—Unicorn Wizard

_Imprint_—At the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal the top card of your library. If it is an instant or sorcery with converted mana cost 3 or less, you may exile it.

2U, T: You may copy any card exiled with Unicorn Prodigy. If you do, may cast the copy without paying its mana cost.

[1/1]

* * *

**Unicorn Blink **W

Tribal Instant—Unicorn

Exile target creature you control, then return that creature to the battlefield under your control.


	4. Earth 161X

**02. Earth 161.X**

When the weight of the Multiverse lifted from her shoulders, Dor found herself in a hallway of bare cinder block walls, exposed pipes and cables, and stark, neon lights: a sharp contrast to the warmth of Twilight Sparkle's library. She spent several moments kneeling on the hall floor, catching her breath. Clearly her attempt at planeswalking had worked, but it had been painful, and she wasn't in a hurry to try it again.

"Freeze, mutie! Don't move 'til I say so, or I'll blow your head off."

Dor tensed, still on her knees. She didn't recognize the voice, but she recognized the slur 'mutie', and had a pretty good idea what world she'd 'walked to.

She was prodded in the back, through her backpack. "Put your hands on your head."

Dor did as she was told.

She was pushed down on her stomach, her arms were wrenched behind her back, and her wrists were bound with a zip tie that cut into her flesh. Then a rough hand slid up her thigh, across her back, and down the other side. Dor stiffened. She realized he was searching her for weapons, but his rough hand on her bare skin reminded her of the evil stepmother's harshness.

"Now, stand up, nice and slow."

But before she could comply, a bright ruby light lit the hall. Dor felt hope catch in her throat. She dared to look up and was rewarded with the sight of a young man in dark blue body armor, a yellow X emblazoned upon his left breast, a ruby quartz visor over his eyes: Cyclops.

She struggled to her feet as he hurried toward her, joined by a slim red-head in a similar uniform: Marvel Girl.

Cyclops grabbed her by the shoulders and helped her to her feet. He pulled a utility knife from his belt and cut the zip tie binding her wrists.

"Cyclops, there are more coming," said Marvel Girl. "We should hurry and rejoin the others."

Dor rubbed at her wrists. "Where are we?" she asked. She looked at her rescuers and realized that they were young, teenagers little older than her. There were many versions of the X-Men. She wondered if this was a version she was familiar with.

"It's all right," said Cyclops. "You've been kidnapped by an organization called Weapon X, but we're here to get you out." He turned to Marvel Girl. "Jean, you should scan her, make sure she's not being tracked."

He turned back to Dor and gave her a reassuring smile. "We'll get you out of here and sort everything out once we're back at the institute. The Professor can answer all your questions. For now, stay behind me. If there's more of these goons—"

"Scott, she not one of us," Marvel Girl interrupted. "She's not a mutant. She's not a prisoner. She's not even from this world."

Cyclops backed up a step, his expression hardened, and he put a hand to his visor.

Dor felt her eyes go wide and put her hands up. "I'm not your enemy, I promise. I… I teleported here. Sort of."

"You've got ten seconds to explain before I blast you and leave you to the mercy of Weapon X," said Cyclops, his threat calmly delivered.

Dor looked pleadingly at Marvel Girl and tried to open her mind. Immediately, she felt the telepath rifle through the offered thoughts like books in a library. Dor thought about her newly awakened planeswalking, the abuse of her evil stepmother, and her un-aimed flight from plane to plane.

Marvel Girl put a hand on Cyclops' shoulder. "She's telling the truth. She's not a threat, and she needs help."

Cyclops relaxed a fraction and nodded. "Sorry for the sudden reaction," he said. "This rescue mission has been plagued with missteps from the beginning."

"There they are!"

"Open fire!"

Marvel Girl reacted quickly, throwing up a telekinetic field even as Dor screamed and dropped to a crouch. She felt her senses beginning to fuzz again, her hold on consciousness beginning to drop away. She was about to faint.

"Come on. She can't keep this up forever." Cyclops tugged on Dor's arm, but she couldn't make herself more. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, his arm around her waist.

She felt her mind slipping back into the void, but crystalline shards of pain hovered just at the threshold between, and she shied back. When she could hear again, it was Marvel Girl's voice. They must have escaped the men with guns.

"She's in bad shape, Scott. I'm sensing a lot of trauma: physical, mental, and emotional. I don't think she's going to be able to leave under her own power."

Dor cursed herself mentally. She'd never wanted to be a damsel in distress. She wanted to be the hero, not the princess.

"I'll carry her," Cyclops said. "We'll get her out."

_No,_ Dor thought. _He'll be able to fight better if he doesn't have to carry me. Come on, wake up. Get up, Dor. Get up. Now. Open your eyes. Open them!_

Marvel Girl was kneeling next to her, her eyes closed, as they took shelter in a side hall. In the main hall, Cyclops traded fire with more men with guns. Marvel Girl was clearly concentrating, so Dor forced herself to her feet without distracting the young X-Man. She shivered and wished the blanket Twilight Sparkle had given her had made the journey from Equestria. T-shirt, panties, socks, and a backpack made for woefully inadequate adventuring gear.

Her contemplation was broken by Cyclops' arrival.

"You're up. Good. Can you walk?"

Dor nodded,d etermind. _I will not be the damsel. I will not be a victim._

To Marvel Girl, he said, "I've cleared the way to the emergency exit. It's still closed. Are they there yet?"

"Nearly."

"Let's go then."

They hurried though the hallways, littered with unconscious bodies. Dor kept her eyes on Cyclops' back, following without question as he navigated the twists and turns. Soon, they came to a hallway that ended in a large, firmly closed door.

"Forge is on the other side," Marvel Girl said. "He says it'll take ten minutes to open it."

"I might be able to knock it down," Cyclops said. "The professor says I've been getting stronger."

But they all whirred about at the sound of heavy, metallic footsteps. It was a hulking, dull grey mech. Two multi-barreled guns were mounted on each shoulder, spitting fire and light. It looked like a crude version of the ED-209. Dor felt a sting to her right shoulder but barely winced as shock threatened to overtake her again.

Marvel Girl put her palms to either side of her head, and a shimmering field of force sprang up between them and the mech. Bullets shattered against the field. But Marvel Girl had been a moment too late. Cyclops spun, falling to the ground, a crimson arc of blood glistening in the air, hanging for a moment like a shiny, satin ribbon. Marvel Girl fell to her knees, screaming with rage and pain.

Dor stared at the mech on the other side of the telekinetic field, watching bullets that should have killed her breaking against the power of thought.

"Do something," she whispered, willing herself to break her state of shock. She pulled her arm up so that her right palm faced the mech. In Ponyville, she'd been able to banish the redcap with the power of the bracelet, but the redcap had been a creature made of æther; it had been shaped by magic; it hadn't been real in the same way that mech was. And what if there was a person in there? She wasn't sure she could banish a real person to the æther. She wasn't certain she wanted to.

Marvel Girl screamed again.

Dor stiffened her resolve. The bracelet grew warm against her wrist and the power was shaped, then shifted, like turning a dial.

A bolt of swirling energy: green and white and blue, leapt from her palm and struck the mech. The machine shattered into dust, leaving the man who had piloted it, sprawled on the floor, dazed, clad now only in a pair of white briefs.

The world rang in her ears, the boundaries of reality fuzzed. She stared through the man on the floor, oblivious of all around her until Marvel Girl grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Come on, Forge opened the doors."

She let Marvel Girl haul her out of the building and though snow that soaked her socks. It wasn't until they were climbing into a sleek black jet, the Blackbird, that she realized Marvel Girl was dragging Cyclops too. Around her was a bustle of activity, young X-Men in dark blue armor with yellow trim, prepared the jet for takeoff while others helped prisoners in bright orange jumpsuits strap in for the flight.

Dor blinked.

The next thing she knew they were in the air.

"Is that a dragon?" someone shouted.

A bright flash filled the cockpit and people started screaming. Dor didn't know if she was one of them.

"I'll show her about lighting," someone shouted over the screaming. It was a rich-timbred voice and Dor focused on a tall, dark woman with cloud white hair staring out the cockpit window as the jet spun crazily: Storm.

Dor blinked.

"What do you think, Forge?"

"She'll get us home, but I'll have to do a lot of work on her. How's Cyclops?"

Dor forced herself to focus. She remembered the blood hanging in the air. She found Marvel Girl, her glorious red hair mussed, her face stained with tears. An alarm gave its measured warning in the background. At least the spinning had stopped.

"He's lost a lot of blood. We need to get him to Dr. McCoy."

Dor gasped suddenly, drawing Marvel Girl's attention. The young woman knelt before her with an expression of concern.

"I have to tell you something," said Dor. She felt her thoughts being drawn back to chaos, and she couldn't remember what she was going to say. She seized on the first cogent thought that presented itself. If nothing else, she could warn them.

"I'm not sure what version of events this is, but it looks 1610. Kind of. I… I've read the difficult times ahead. That is, in some versions, most versions, mutants have it pretty hard. Phoenix Force… Onslaught… Ultimatum…" She didn't know where to start.

Marvel Girl held up a hand. "Don't say anything more. It does us no good, trying to act on a future that may never come to pass. We're better off anticipating and reacting based upon our own experiences. Get some rest. We'll be at the mansion soon"

Dor blinked.

Without her willing it, the crystalline needles eased into her mind, bringing with them a slow pain as she slipped into the chaos between planes.

* * *

**Psychic Advantage **UU

Enchantment

You may look at the top card of any library at any time.

* * *

**Optic Blast **X R/W

Optic Blast deals X damage to target attacking or blocking creature.


	5. Ivalice

**03. Ivalice**

Dor woke with a start, her heart hammering, but the X-Men, the Blackbird, the sirens and spinning and shouting, were all gone. Instead, she lay in a grassy, peaceful, sun-lit meadow. The snow she'd gathered between the Weapon X facility and the Blackbird had melted, leaving her damp, but she wasn't cold. She waited for her heart to slow to normal, her breathing to come under control, her head to stop aching, before she sat up.

Moving awakened her body to pain. Her right shoulder was afire, and she found a hasty bandage stained with dried blood. Her feet, encased in damp socks, felt bruised and scraped from the dash over icy ground. And underneath it all was the ache from the evil stepmother's beatings.

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths until the pain receded.

_This can't be happening, _she told herself, but in the next moment shook her head. She'd always been irritated with characters who refused to believe the fantastic events they found themselves in. She'd always wanted to kick those characters out of their stories and take their place.

The backpack was digging into her back, and, suddenly curious, she sat up, slipped the pack off her shoulders, and withdrew the binder. Dor opened it to find the cards within had changed. The first four pockets of the nine-pocket page were filled now with cards representing her short adventure: a creature card clearly meant to represent Twilight Sparkle and one representing the unicorn's quick teleportation. The other two were each a representation of the powers of Cyclops and Marvel Girl. The last card on the page was the still incomplete _Mother's Bracelet_.

She flipped through the pages, but the rest remained blank.

Fascinated, Dor pulled the card named _Unicorn Prodigy_ from its pocket. It was similar to the Magic cards she had known back home, but clearly different, clearly more. It was heavier than cardboard but just as thin. The card face was smooth and cool. The colors were bright and detailed, almost as if the figure depicted might move at any moment. She flipped it over and found the familiar Magic card back: Five colored orbs, on a leather-brown field. She could feel the power in it. It tingled along her fingers. She remembered the charms and amulets carried by the dueling wizards of Estark from Magic's first novel, _Arena_. She wondered if these cards were similar. She hoped so.

A faint sound caught her attention just before the smell of cooking food. The smell made her stomach growl and her jaw ache with hunger. She hadn't eaten since lunch at school, and it had been weeks since the evil stepmother had allowed her a full dinner.

With trepidation, but slave to her stomach, Dor put away the binder, slung the pack on her back, and picked her way across the meadow and into the woods, mindful of her sock-clad feet and wounded shoulder.

Within minutes, she found herself on the edge of a military camp bustling with activity. She recognized the soldiers, or rather, she recognized their character classes: the men clad in dark blue gis cinched with black belts who sat in a loose circle, meditating, were Monks; the women wearing white robes trimmed in red and tending the wounded were White Mages; the lone soldier sitting on a stool, sharpening his spear, wearing a dragon-themed helmet was a Dragoon.

"You, girl! What are you doing lazing about here? And half-dressed at that! Why, I've half a mind to…"

Dor turned in time to find a large man in a leather apron glowering at her. He was not of a character class she recognized. Before she could protest, the man grabbed her just above her elbow, sat on a convenient stump, and turned her over his knee. It was a position familiar to her after the death of her father and the revelation of her stepmother as an abusive tyrant. She was about to get a spanking and the panic that welled in her chest forestalled any vocal objection.

The large man's meaty hand slapped her panty-clad backside several times in quick succession, reawakening the pain of her stepmother's beating, agitating the wound in her shoulder. Each spank was a sting that resonated from her bottom to her to her shoulders to her knees. The thin material of her panties did little to protect her. She wished her unexpected journey had given her at least a little time to prepare. The fiery sting combined with her wounds to make her cry out, a high, sharp sound she was quickly ashamed of.

"I'll give you something to cry about, girl," the hefty man growled, and his thick, blunt fingers grasped the hem of her panties.

But before her could bare her bottom, before he could humiliate her futher, before he could continue to spank her, an authoritative voice rung out.

"Stay your hand, Quartermaster. That girl is mine."

Dor wasn't certain she liked the idea of being claimed so completely, but at least the spanking had stopped.

"Oh." The quartermaster sounded suddenly contrite. "Pardon, Holy Mother. I didn't know."

Dor found herself on her feet, blinking through tears at a white mage. The woman was young and beautiful with scarlet hair and creamy skin. She bore a wooden staff topped with a red stone. She looked at Dor impassively as the quartermaster bowed and apologized and made himself scarce.

Her chest shaking with unshed sobs, her bottom throbbing from recent spanking, her nerves shot from constant assault, Dor found that she couldn't thank the woman properly. She knew if she tried to speak, she'd break down entirely. Again. And she cursed herself for it.

"You've been beaten recently, you've cuts on your feet, and a poorly dressed wound on your shoulder," said the white mage. "Will you accept healing?"

Dor tried to nod but began to shake instead.

The white light that bathed her was warm and comforting and it let loose the flood of tears she'd tried to hold back. Her wounds healed. The ache fled. She fell to her knees, but at least she didn't faint. Dor didn't know for how long she knelt in the grass of the wood, but after a while, the white mage helped her to her feet and led her and into the pavilion where the wounded were tended. There, the white mage draped a blanket over her shoulders, and drew a curtain to give them a semblance of privacy. Dor's shoulder began to itch, but she didn't want to seem ungrateful so said nothing. She tried to keep from shifting uncomfortably.

"Child, what are you doing roaming the edges of a battlefield in the middle of the greatest conflict Ivalice has ever seen?" the white mage demanded.

Dor took a deep breath and found it steady. _I will not be the victim_.

"That's a bit of a story, Holy Mother." Dor gave a brief explanation about her evil stepmother, her real mother's bracelet, and her sudden gift for planeswalking. "And since she's after me, I'm afraid I've put you all in danger. She followed me to Equestria and, I think, to Earth 1610. I should probably get going"

The white mage held up a hand. "You don't need leave to protect us. If your enemy comes here tossing lightning bolts and summoning goblins, she'll find quite a shock, I assure you."

The white mage smiled and Dor smiled back.

"So I take it this is just one step on your journey. Where are you going?" the white mage asked.

Dor shrugged.

"You're running without a destination in mind? You haven't got a haven to seek?"

Dor laughed. "Well, how's that for irony. That's my sur name, Havens, and I haven't got one to run to." She sighed. "I hadn't considered a destination. It's all happened so fast. I suppose I could… no. It's a stupid idea."

"Tell me," the white mage encouraged her.

"It's just… dad, before he died that is, used to tell me that my mother was an angel, that she hadn't abandoned us, she'd just had to go home. I thought he just didn't want to tell me she'd died. But, now that magic is real and I'm a planeswalker, I'm reevaluating. Perhaps I could look for her. But I haven't any idea where she is and I don't know how to planeswalk on purpose. And it hurts"

The white mage nodded. "That last bit I might be able to help you with."

"You know how to planeswalk?"

"No, but I know a thing or two about the mental processes of directing magical energy. Do you feel up to it?"

In the hours since coming home from school, she'd accidently begun planeswalking, befriended a unicorn, been rescued by the X-Men, and she'd done it all clad in little better than underwear.

She wanted some real clothes.

"Holy Mother, I'm sorry to impose, but would it be too much to ask for some pants and some shoes?" Her stomach rumbled and she remembered the scent that had drawn her form that peaceful meadow. "And some food?"

The white mage smiled. "Not at all. I'll see what I can do."

Not ten minutes later, Dor was dressed in clean if worn clothes: a sleeveless chemise, hose, underwear, a robe with hood, a wide leather belt, and leather boots—all white, or as white as laundry could get in a military camp. The robe wasn't trimmed in red as she wasn't a member of the Order of White Mages. Her binder, or grimoire as the white mage called it, remained tucked in her backpack.

The white mage apologized for having little to offer to eat other than tea and a bit of bread. Rations, she explained, were tight outside of meal times.

"Not at all," Dor said. "This is perfect. Thank you so much. I…"

She was interrupted by the entrance of a green-furred quadruped with long, pointed ears and a large red gemstone shining in the middle of its forehead. It sauntered to the white mage and rubbed against one of her legs, much like a cat.

"You have a carbunkle," Dor said, entranced by the creature.

The white mage laughed. "It might better be said that Nageeta has me," she said fondly. "They're an inquisitive race and like the attention, but they are not animals and certainly not pets."

Nageeta wandered over to Dor and regarded her coolly for several moments before leaping into her lap, curling up, and closing his eyes.

"He likes to be scratched at the base of his ears."

Dor complied, and the carbunkle began to purr and snuggled against her lap.

"Forgive me, Holy Mother," Dor said, "It's not that I'm not grateful, but this is Ivalice, a land torn by war. Surely you have more pressing duties. Why are you spending all this time on me?"

The woman pursed her lips and steepled her fingers. "This conflict wears on me. I heal men and women from the front lines and send them back out to get hurt again, or to die. I used to be a teacher."

"And you want to teach again," said Dor. "So, I'm a distraction?"

"If you don't mind."

Dor smiled. "I don't. And thank you."

The white mage smiled and nodded. "My pleasure. Now, before some crisis comes knocking at my door, let's get started.

She held a hand out to Dor, and Dor took it.

"Close your eyes. Imagine a room in your mind, a safe place, a personal place, a place that only you can go to."

The Holy Mother's voice was soothing, like a cool drink on a hot day. Dor could feel the white mage's power tingling on her palm where their hands met. She could feel the white mage's mind, bright and kind.

Dor imagined her bedroom back home, but rather than stripped of its books and games and movies, it was as it had been before her father had died. The bookshelves were full, the walls were covered with posters, and there was no door for the evil stepmother to come through.

"Now, imagine a desk."

That was easy, there was already a desk in her room where she did her homework and drawing and writing.

"And on the desk is a bowl of still, cool water. Do you see it?"

Dor concentrated and imagined the bowl of water on her desk. "I do," she said, her voice slurred.

"Very good. You have a strong imagination."

"Is that important?"

"Yes. Anyone with the potential for magic can learn the words and the motions and be a perfectly serviceable mage. But magic is driven by metaphor, and the better the imagination, the more powerful and creative the magic."

Dor beamed with pride.

"Now, the water represents your power. You can dip a finger into it, or you can dive into it. Your power comes from within. For now, just dip a finger…"

Dor dipped a finger into the water, and it was like a window opened in her mind. She could feel a connection to the places of her youth: the pine forests where she and her mother used to hike, the icy rivers where she and her father used to fish, the snow-covered fields behind their house where she'd played as a little girl. And Dor realized that though the white mage might draw on inner power, Dor could draw upon her connections to the lands of her youth, from her manabonds.

The bowl of water became a warm spark of light in her mind. She felt the chaos beyond the realm of Ivalice, the Blind Eternities, and she knew she could walk through it to other planes of existence. The idea was exhilarating. At the same time, she knew a misstep would break her atom from atom and scatter her essence to nothingness. The crystalline shards of doubt hovered at the edge of her mind and she drew back.

"Goddess," the white mage murmured, "what energy. I've never seen…"

Dor felt the white mage looking through her like a telescope at the Blind Eternities and what might lie beyond.

"You could be the greatest white mage Ivalice has ever seen."

The lesson was interrupted by a crash of thunder and shouts of alarm. Dor felt a thrill of fear. She had expected her evil stepmother to follow her, but she had hoped to have more time. The lesson had been going so well.

The white mage stood and hurried to the healing pavilion's entrance where were gathered other white mages, some already chanting spells. The carbunkle, Nageeta, was twining around their ankles.

Dor stood next to the Holy Mother.

The camp beyond was chaos.

In the bright light of day, Dor got a clear look at her evil stepmother for the first time since she'd climbed out the window. The woman was tall and slim as Dor remembered, but her conservative brunette hair had become black and short and spiky. Her brown eyes now shone a malevolent orange. She was clad in black leather and scraps of tattered red silk. Her skin was branded and tattooed in haphazard designs. She looked like the woman who had terrorized her after her father's death, but as seen through a twisted carnival mirror.

Knights and monks encircled the evil stepmother, black mages and red mages stood in support. The evil stepmother was lashing out with blades of shadow and bolts of lightning. Goblins and imps engaged the knights and monks. Though she was outnumbered, the evil stepmother was engaging an army, and she was holding her own.

Dor stared at the woman, worried she would notice her, but wanting it to happen. Dor had been victim of the evil stepmother's whims for months. She wanted to be more than a victim.

The Holy Mother shouted a word and gestured. White light engulfed a trio of imps. They screamed and chittered and vanished like shadows before the sun.

The evil stepmother glared at the Holy Mother. She noticed Dor. She screamed something that was lost in the chaos of the soldiers fending off her summoned creatures. With one long, black-nailed finger, she pointed at Dor, and Dor could feel the spell building.

She reacted automatically, picturing the spark of light mind, and her bracelet began to feel warm against her wrist, her shoulders itched. The familiar feeling then switched to yet a third option.

_A single spell with three options: a charm..._

But Dor had little time for the thought as a lightning bolt began to burst from the evil stepmother's finger, then sputtered and fizzled and vanished—countered.

Cursing and stamping, the evil stepmother let loose a barrage of chaos and darkness streaking at Dor. It was too much too fast, and Dor knew she wouldn't be able to respond in time. She had only a moment for panic before Nageeta sat at her feet, flicked his tail dismissively, and a green dome of light encased Dor. The fire and lightning and darkness dissipated upon the shield.

Loosing the full of her fury on Dor had cost the evil stepmother her focus on summoning creatures to hold off the knights and monks. Her aether-wrought minions were falling one after another, and, through her mad cursing, she must have realized she was overwhelmed and outclassed. In a burst of flame and smoke, she disappeared. Her summoned imps and goblins returned to the æther. The chaos settled and order returned to the military camp. The wounded made their way to the white mage's pavilion.

"That was impressive," said the Holy Mother. "I've never seen anything quite like it. Perhaps, since your pursuer has fled, you might consider staying and joining the Order."

Nageeta rubbed against her legs.

Dor looked down and smiled. She knelt and scratched the base of his ears. He arced and pressed against her. "Thank you, Nageeta." She looked up at the white mage. "Thank you both. I would love to stay, but if I do, she'll come back. I can't put you in danger. You've got enough going on as it is."

"I thought you might say that." The Holy Mother embraced Dor and kissed her cheek. "Be careful. Be strong. Be imaginative."

Dor returned the embrace. "Thank you."

"Do you know where you'll go?"

Dor shook her head. "I'd like to look for my mother, but I don't know where to begin. For now, I'll keep running and lead that wicked woman away from you."

Dor took several steps away. She closed her eyes and focused. She imagined the warm spark of power, the power that lead to the Blind Eternities and the Multiverse. The crystalline needles of pain appeared and she shied away from them. The spark grew dim in her mind.

"No," Dor whispered. "You can do this. You're not the victim; you're the hero." She focused again, and this time when the crystalline needled appeared, she imagined they weren't there. Slowly, they shimmered and dissipated, leaving the Multiverse unbarred to her.

She stepped into the spark in her mind.

* * *

**Interlude**

**I. Imagine a Vast Beach**

by Richard Garfield

The sand shifts constantly, moved mostly by the tide and the wind, but also by the creatures that scurry across it or burrow beneath. Subtler effects, like compression or changes in temperature, also make their mark. Sometimes the grains cling together, weathering as a single stone until they are broken apart by some other force.

Now, imagine that each of these grains of sand is its own world, and you begin to get a picture of how Dominia works. Dominia is a multiverse, a collection of universes. Usually, the inhabitants of a particular world have no interaction with the other universes; they live out their lives believing that their home is the 'One World.' Even when some cataclysm on a nearby plane affects the surrounding worlds, the occupants of those worlds can blame the gods, or perhaps invent nonexistent natural laws to explain the changes in their plane.

A small number of the multiverse's inhabitants, however, are fully aware of the existence of worlds outside their home plane. They have learned to travel between planes…

*Excerpted from Magic: The Gathering Pocket Players' Guide

* * *

**Holy Banishing **3W

Instant

Exile up to three target black creatures.

* * *

**White Mage **1W

Creature—Human Cleric

WW: Prevent the next 3 damage to target creature or player.

[2/2]

* * *

**Sheltering Light **2G

Instant

You and permanents you control gain hexproof until end of turn.


	6. Kashyyyk

**04. Kashyyyk**

The forest was deep and dim and quiet.

Dor brushed off the unsettling vastness of the Blind Eternities like a film of sand. With all those planes of existence stretching out to forever, shifting and sliding, that she would be able to find a single person in all of that…

The sounds of the forest went about their business as though she hadn't just appeared from nowhere. It was, for the moment, peaceful. That would change, of course, when her evil stepmother showed up. On the other hand, their encounter in Ivalice hadn't gone her way. Perhaps the crazy woman would give up the pursuit.

She stood upon a hillock, covered in enormous trees with little undergrowth. The treest stretched higher and grew broader than any other tree she'd seen in real life. They were titans among giants.

Dor found a convenient rock and sat before pulling her binder from her pack. Whether the evil stepmother appeared or not, Dor was excited about what would appear in the binder next. She opened it to the first page and found that more cards had filled in: a creature card (the white mage), a two spells (the white mage's banishing, and the carbunkle's power). Dor ran her fingers across the nine-pocket page and they tingled invitingly.

The sounds of war ghosted among the trees, pulling her from her contemplation. Dor tucked her grimoire into her pack and looked about. In the distance, she saw the spindly forms of the Trade Federation battledroids trading fire with the white-armored clone troopers of the Republic. Their blasterfire winking like fireflies among the trees.

A snatch of Williams' _Imperial March_ floated through Dor's mind, and she shivered.

The battle was clearly moving in her direction, the battledroids being pushed back by the superior tactics of the clone troopers. The grimoire grew warm against her back, even though the layers of backpack, robe, and chemise. The window in her mind opened and she could feel beyond to those lands of her youth. And she remembered Cyclops defending them from the goons of Weapon X, his ruby beams of light that laid low their attackers.

She thought of the card in its pocket in her grimoire. She could feel it in her hand, slim and heavy, smooth and vibrant, bright and hot. Pressure began to build behind her eyes. She held it as the battledroids drew closer, retreating against the onslaught of the clone troopers. She poured the power of the manabonds into the mental image of the card in her hand.

They were upon her position more quickly than she expected. Her hillock, with its superior height, seemed a good place for the battledroids to make their stand as they were no longer retreating, holding their ground instead.

The pressure behind her eyes had grown painful. She fueled the spell from her grimoire with all she could, the bracelet grew warm, and a ruby light filled her vision. And when she could hold it no longer, she let it loose, the optic blast cutting a swath through the battledroids, destroying them and scattering them across the thick-treed forest.

That earned her their attention.

Battledroids turned and began firing on her. She reacted instantly with Twilight Sparkle's teleportation, avoiding the volley of blaster fire. Her breathing coming hard, her heart hammering at her chest, she took cover behind a large tree.

"What are you doing?" she asked herself, shocked at her own audacity. "Run away," she insisted. But she didn't run. Instead, focused on the warmth at her back and reached through the window in her mind. She reminded herself that she didn't want to be a victim.

She wanted to fight.

With thudding heart and grim determination, Dor stepped out from behind her cover, focusing on the warmth of power at her back, the window to the lands of her youth, and the grimoire of Magic cards. She felt warm all over, her shoulders itched.

The battledroids fired upon her, and she remembered the protection of the carbunkle. A green dome of light encased her, dissipating the blaster fire. For a moment, the thrill of success suffused her. But the light wouldn't last forever, and she was outnumbered.

"Creatures," she whispered.

She focused on the friends she'd made and the cards in her girmoire. She pulled at the power through the window in her mind. Her bracelet grew warm. And Twilight Sparkle appeared at her side, readied for combat. She knew it wasn't truly Twilight, she knew that she hadn't pulled Twilight from her home plane, but rather that she'd shaped the æther into a memory, an echo, of Twilight.

The sheltering light dimmed. The battledroids advanced on their position, still firing, and the moments melted into chaos.

Dor could feel the ætheric echo of Twilight Sparkle like an extension of herself. The unicorn responded to her thoughts, to her will, and cast spells with deft grace. Together, they blinked across the battlefield, blasting battledroids with red and purple light, and shielding each other with magic.

The _Imperial March _swelled in her mind, its ominous tattoo thudding in time with her heartbeat, and the clone troopers stormed the hill. Blaster fire filled the space between the trees. Bark splintered and shattered and Dor choked on the stink of smoke and fire.

And through the fire and chaos, Dor held her own. Dor had never expected she would enjoy a real life battle. She had always thought she prefered the experience combat through the buffer of fiction, but the adrenaline was thrilling

Then she caught a glimpse of the evil stepmother: her black and red tatters, her tattooed body, her manic glare, as she blasted indescriminatly through the forest, fire and lightning flinging from her fingertips. She tasted a spoiled, spicy taint.

The evil stepmother hadn't seen her yet. There was a moment, a chance, to strike. Dor hesitated.

She wanted to be ready to face the woman, to hit her with and optic blast, but she was afraid. Her couterspell back in Ivalice had been enough against a single lightning bolt, but the evil stepmother was fast and furious.

Lightning lit the sky and thunder shook her to her knees. Something struck her shoulder, spinning her about before slamming her to the dirt floor. She tried to push herself to her knees, but her injured shoulder screamed and wouldn't hold her weight.

_White mage_, she told herself.

Pushing through the pain, Dor focused on her grimoire. She pictured the card representing the Holy Mother. It felt cool and smooth in her mind. She fuled it with the power from beyond the window and in a shimmering blinking light, an ætheric white mage appeared. In the next moment, the white mage healed her shoulder, and Dor stood, at the ready.

But the sounds of combat were gone.

Dor looked around. The only battledroids she could see were fallen and broken. The evil stepmother was nowhere to be seen. She was surrounded by clone troopers, weapons aimed at her but not firing. Her ætheric allies stood ready to defend her.

Slowly, Dor put her hands up. "I was fighting the battledroids," she said. "That makes us allies, right?"

The trooper in front bore an orange shoulder pad, indication of rank. He grunted. "Kashyyyk is no place for a little girl. Are you some kind of jedi?"

Dor shook her head. "Well, maybe. Kind of. No, not really."

"I don't have times for games, girl. There's a legion of battledroids descending on this position."

"Sir. The jedi commander just arrived. We could give her over to him."

The trooper in command nodded immediately. "Good. Do it."

The _Imperial March_ still drummed through her mind, prompting her not to trust the clone troopers, but jedi could be trusted, so she went with the small cotire of troopers while her mind raced.

Kashyyyk.

The Clone War came to Kashyyyk near its end, not long before the betrayal of the clone troops. But, if they were still answering to jedi, that meant Order 66 hadn't happened yet. They were allied with the Republic. Even so, Williams' _Imperial March_ muttered ominously through her thoughts. The betrayal would come soon.

The troopers escorted her and her summoned allies to a small clearing.

The jedi sat alone in the tiny meadow, shadow-dappled sunlight illuminating his venerable features. His pale, wispy hair hung like a halo about his head, wreathing his long, pointed ears like clouds. His lightsaber rested in his lap. He did not open his eyes as they approached. His calm was unbreakable.

"Take her from here, I will, Lieutenant," he said quietly.

The clone troopers saluted. "Yes, sir."

Her guard tramped back into the woods. Dor did not watch them go. Instead, she kept her gaze on the jedi before her, afraid to do something foolish in front of him.

"Strong in the force, you are, but without training. Strange it is, unlike anything I've seen. Ordered, your mind is, but clouded, by fear."

She knew he meant her no harm, so she relaxed, and let the summoned echoes fade, returning to the æther. She entered the clearing and, not liking the idea of standing over the diminutive jedi, she knelt.

"Yes, I… This is all new to me. I'm… But Master Yoda, I have to warn you."

"Sit, child. A breath, you should take. This fear, you must dispel. Only then, ready will you be, to tell me what is so important."

Dor wanted to argue, but she knew it would do no good. She knew that jedi, particularly this jedi, preferred a calm, orderly approach to problems. She knew they were creatures who dealt with the moment. She bit her lip on a sigh and sat cross legged, tucking her white skirt around her legs. She took a deep breath and muttered a line from the films, "Be mindful of the future, but not at the expense the present."

"Hmm. Not unfamiliar with jedi teachings, you are."

"Where I come from, this has all happened all ready." She paused, but Master Yoda did not rebuke her, so she continued. "It's fiction, and I've seen the movies a hundred times. Even the prequels. Master Yoda, Chancellor Palpatine is the sith lord. He will turn Anakin Skywalker and the Army of the Republic against you. And if you have come to Kashyyyk to help the wookiees against the Confederacy, then he will do so soon."

The diminutive jedi frowned. "A difficult thing, the future is. Like a river, flows it does from event to event. A single pebble, alter the flow, it can."

Dor nodded. In the movie, Yoda survived without her warning. Had she changed things? Would her warning make him more or less likely to survive? And then what? Would he still fall to the emperor? Would he still exile himself to Degobah? Or, perhaps there multiple versions of this universe as there were of the Marvel universe.

"A butterfly crushed under a boot in the past might irrevocably change the future," Dor said, recalling Bradbury's classic tale.

Master Yoda nodded. "Not insignificant, is this warning. Due consideration, will I give it. On guard, I will be; warn the jedi, I will."

Lightning lit the sky. Dor jumped.

Master Yoda looked up and frowned.

Dor stood. "I wish I could stay, to help you, but I'm pursued by a powerful enemy. I must keep going."

"Going where?"

Dor hesitated. She had half an answer—she was searching for a person, not a place, and didn't know how to find her.

"Difficult the journey is, without a destination. Portents of disaster you have brought. A destination, do you have for me, perhaps?"

Dor wondered whether or not to say anything, whether to risk crushing the butterfly. But she couldn't not help. Even knowing how this movie ended, she had to try to help. After all, people rewrote stories all the time.

"If it all goes as I said it would, Master Skywalker's son can right it. And, if necessary, his daughter."

Master Yoda nodded.

"I have to go now." Dor looked around nervously, expecting the evil stepmother to come crashing through the trees at any moment. "Good luck, Master Yoda."

"May the Force be with you, child."

Dor closed her eyes, focused, and summoned the warm spark that lead to the Multiverse.

* * *

**Jedi Grandmaster **GWU

Creature—Monk

Whenever Jedi Grandmaster blocks, it deals damage equal to its toughness to the creature it is assigned to block and that creature's controller.

[0/4]

* * *

**Imperial March **1 W/B W/B

Tribal Enchantment—Soldier

At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 white and black Soldier creature token with first strike onto the battlefield.

* * *

**Lightsaber **3

Artifact—Equipment

Equipped creature gains +3/+3 and "U: Change the target of target spell or ability that targets equipped creature to another of your choice. The new target must be legal."

Equip 3

UU: Attach Lightsaber to target creature you control.


	7. Hogwarts - Part 1

**05. Hogwarts**

**Part 1**

Rain pounded on the high, narrow, leaded windows of the entry hall. The hall was lit only by the candle light of the dining hall beyond a pair of large doors not quite closed all the way. The combined voices of the people in the dining hall rumbled through the doors to where she stood in the shadow of a stairway.

Lightning lit the windows and Dor jumped. It could have just be the storm outside, or it could have be the evil stepmother.

"How can she follow me?" Dor wondered. "How does she know where I'm going when even I don't?"

Dor prepared to planeswalk again, when she caught a better look into the dining hall—the ceiling appeared to be open to the storm clouds, candles floated above the tables laden with an enormous feast, and the tables themselves were jam-packed with students ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, all clad in black robes and school uniforms—and realized where she was.

Her stomach growled, again. Her last meal had been in a military camp in Ivalice, and that had been little more than tea. The dining hall of Hogwarts was known for its amazing feasts. Even more, the staff at Hogwarts were some of the most powerful wizards of their kind and Hogwarts itself one of the most magically secure places. Perhaps there was succor to be had here. Dor dared to hope.

But no. She couldn't ask anyone to put themselves in danger for her sake.

The tramping of feet on stairs prompted her to hide deeper under the stairway even as the entry lit up magically. Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts, ascended a set of stairs well ahead of a gaggle of kids in dark robes—first years on the first day of school. It had been her first day of school too.

"'Ere ya' are, Professor. A bit damp, but I think they'll be all right."

Dor turned to find a wide man with a bushy moustache and clad in thick velvet robes had appeared at the entrance to the dining hall. It had to be Professor Slughorn, looking much more like his book self than his movie self. Hagrid, on the other hand, whose long strides were taking him quickly down a side hall, looked just as Coltrane had portrayed him.

"Good evening my young friends," Professor Slughorn greeted them, beaming. "In just a few moments, you will be sorted into your houses. While you are here at Hogwarts, your house is like your home, your family. There are four houses: Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. Each house has its proclivities, and has produced it share of famous witches and wizards. Your accomplishments here at Hogwarts gain your house points while any…" and he chuckled fondly, "naughtiness loses points, all in pursuit of the House Cup awarded at the end of the year.

"Well, let's be on with it then, no sense standing out here in the hall when there's a feast to be had."

The first-years followed Professor Slughorn into the main hall. Dor watched them go, their mixture of trepidation and eagerness endearing. She wished she could go with them.

She didn't notice the boy until he grabbed her hand. "Come on," he said, "you don't have to be scared." He had dark skin and crinkly black hair and bright green eyes. His ears stuck out on the side of his head like jug handles and his smile was wide and charming, for a kid.

"Oh, but I…"

The boy tugged her into the dining hall, trailing after the first years. Compared to their uniforms of dark clothing, she was a dusty dove among corbies. The students spotted her and grew quietly curious. That quiet followed her like a wave down the aisle until they were at the foot of the head table.

"Wha… who are you?" Professor Slughorn demanded, finally noticing her. He was soon joined by the thin, serious, severe Professor McGonagall. "I don't know where she came from, Headmistress," Professor Slughorn said. "I didn't see her in the entryway."

Dor spoke up. "I'm sorry to intrude. I didn't mean to. I'm not from here, but I don't mean any harm." She couldn't help notice how her accent compared to theirs marked her as further outsider.

Professor McGonagall fixed her with an intense gaze. The silence of the dining hall hung on that gaze. Dor felt her throat go dry. She didn't feel she was in danger as she had in the Weapon X facility or facing the fire of Federation battledroids, but Professor McGonagall was distinctly intimidating.

"What is your name?"

"Dor… er… Dorothy Alice Wendy. Havens. Havens is my last name." Dor could feel her cheeks reddening as she stumbled over her own name.

"If you truly mean us no harm, the Sorting Hat will know. Come sit here, please." Though Headmistress McGonagall had said please, it was not a request.

Dor was anxious. Everyone in the Hogwarts dining hall was staring at her. She had faced bloody and lethal combat since this sudden adventure had begun, but having Professor McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts, giving her that stern gaze made her feel nervous in a whole new way. So she swallowed hard and stepped up to the head table and sat upon the stool, staring out at the students without really seeing them. Then the Sorting Hat was set upon her head and fell over her eyes, plunging her into darkness.

A flurry of images flashed in her mind: reading with her father, doing yoga with her mother, eating dinner as a family; then came her mother's departure, her father's marriage to the evil stepmother and subsequent death, her stepmother's systematic abuse: theft, starvation, beating.

"_Hmm… not particularly courageous are you?" _

Dor started at the voice of the Sorting Hat, gripping the stool beneath her. Then a new set of images flashed before her, the images of her journey thus far, her conversation with Twilight Sparkle, her escape with the X-Men, her lesson with the Holy Mother, her fight with the battledroids and subsequent meeting with Master Yoda.

"_Not very ambitious either. You're smart enough, but… but you've a loyal heart, and it will serve you well, Dorothy A. W. Havens." _

Aloud, to the gathered, the Sorting Hat shouted "Hufflepuff!" _"Let them figure that one out,"_ it muttered smugly just before it was whipped off her head. The assembled students were whispering so that the susurrus filled the dining hall.

Dor looked up, fearing the Headmistress of Hogwarts would again be fixing her with that fearsome gaze. Instead, her glare was for the Sorting Hat.

"But, I never received the letter," Dor said. "I'm too old to be a first-year. I'm not a wizard. Not really. At least, I think I'm not."

"We'll sort that out later," Professor McGonagall said quietly. Then she turned to the head table. "Pomona, she's been claimed for Hufflepuff. This is irregular, but not without precedence. It's your house and your decision."

The short, round woman with curly grey hair stood and looked Dor up and down before giving a small smile. "Helga Hufflepuff believed in hospitality for those in need, strangers and friends alike. She welcomed all comers. I'd be remiss if I turned Ms. Havens away, especially when the Sorting Hat has made it clear there's a place for her here."

And that settled it.

Dor took her place at the Hufflepuff table to cheers from the gathered. She sat at the end as Hufflepuffs introduced themselves. Her mind wouldn't hang on to their names though she tried to be polite.

She'd imagined this moment many times in many ways, Hogwarts had been one of her favorite mental escapes, but she had never imagined it like this. Before she knew it, the sorting was done and she was joined by seven new Hufflepuffs, three girls and four boys, including the friendly boy with the big ears and charming smile who'd led her into the dining hall. His name was Barrett O'Madigan.

When the feast appeared, she let the others' conversation wash over her. She participated when prompted, but otherwise she focused on her food. There was all kinds available, and considering her recent lack of food she was tempted to stuff herself silly but knew that doing so might make her sick, so she ate deliberately and judiciously.

"What about you, Dor?" Barrett asked.

Everyone nearby went quiet at that. Clearly they'd all wanted to ask.

They'd all been talking abuot their familes and where they'd come from. Dor set down her mug of chilled milk. "Well… I'm not from around here, like I said."

"You're American?" Barrett asked. "I've never heard of an American at Hogwarts."

Dor nodded.

"But there's more, isn't there?" Barret said. "You can tell us. We're all Hufflepuffs here." All the Hufflepuff nearby nodded eagerly.

Dor smiled. It felt good. "It's a bit of a story. And you probably won't believe it."

"Sure we will," Barret encouraged.

"Well," said Dor, uncertain, but eager to belong. "I'm… I'm from a different place. A different version, I guess." She wasn't certain she should tell them Hogwarts was fiction on her world. Twilight Sparkle had taken the news well, but Twilight was an accomplished mage and librarian. So, she decided to make an adventure of it. She told them about the evil stepmother and shifting from her home to a world of talking horses, then a world of dystopian strife and super powers, then of high fantasy: knights and wizards, then of giant trees and fighting robots.

Her audience was rapt.

"Ms. Havens, a word." Professor Sprout had paused at their group before moving on.

Dor bid her fellows good night and stood to follow.

Professor Sprout led her through the twisting hallways of Hogwarts, down a set of stairs, warmly lit, to a side hall under an arched entryway which led to a round door, in the center of which was a copper door knob.

Dor quoted quietly, "'In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. '"

Professor Sprout flashed her a smile.

The quarters were warm and cozy and filled with potted plants: flowers and vegetables, herbs and shrubs, mundane and magical. Dor found herself looking about in awe. She didn't know much about plants and was certain she'd never earn high marks in an Herbology class, but she had to admit, some of them were fascinating on sight alone.

"Would you care for some tea, dear?" Professor Sprout asked.

"Oh. Um… sure. Thank you. I expect you'll want to know who I am and what I'm doing here?"

Professor Sprout shrugged. "Hogwarts receives unexpected visitors from time to time. As the House of hospitality and acceptance it is Hufflepuff's job to care for them. Do you prefer honey?"

Dor nodded. "Yes, please."

"The Sorting Hat accepted you, even placed you with Hufflepuff, so you're welcome to stay and study as long as you need to. I can schedule you for regular classes with the first-years, or we can work out an independent study, but this is a school, not a hostel, so you must be a student, not a guest."

"Professor, you should know…" she paused as Professor Sprout handed her a cup of tea on a chipped saucer made of pottery. "You should know, I'm being pursued by a terrible woman who is a powerful mage. I know you're not supposed to be able to apparate on Hogwarts grounds, but if I can planeswalk here, perhaps—"

Professor Sprout held up a hand to forestall her. "The Hogwarts defenses are powerful. It takes even the most powerful of wizards quite a lot of effort to breach them. You're on Hogwarts grounds because Hogwarts did not reject you. This woman who pursues you will find it difficult to follow."

When they'd finished their tea, Professor Sprout led her to the Hufflepuff basement, also fronted by a round door with a central doorknob. The common room put her in mind of the coziest hobbit hole she'd ever read of. The common room was empty already, students readying themselves for the first day of classes. Through a wood-paneled hallway lit with burnished copper lanterns, Professor Sprout knocked on a door with a carved wooden plaque reading "First-Years".

Inside was a cozy room with two four poster beds on the left and two on the right, each accompanied by their own freestanding wardrobes. At the foot of the room was a large fireplace with a polished, carved wooden mantel piece. A round table stood in the center of the room holding a pot with a nice smelling flowery plant at its center.

Three girls, already clad in night gowns, looked up as they entered. She recognized them as the three girls sorted into Hufflepuff that night. She wished she'd paid attention to their names.

Professor Sprout bid them good night and Dor was left with three little girls who looked at her with wide eyes.

"Uh… I'm Dor."

The girls were Sandra, a brunette with large, brown eyes and dimples; Aelf, a ginger with shining green eyes and a scattering of freckles; and Eldora, a raven-haired girl with black eyes and creamy skin. They were uniformly shy, though that was, perhaps, because she was older than them.

Eventually, Aelf said, "Would you tell us about how you got here again?"

Dor was surprised by the request. She'd told the story already, but the girls seemed excited to hear it again, so they all gathered around the table and Dor told about how she'd overheard her evil stepmother talking about divination, torture, and murder…

When all the girls had gone to sleep, Dor turned her attention to the backpack. She withdrew the t-shirt, panties, and socks she'd started her adventure in. She changed into her old clothes, and when she went to put the clothes the Holy Mother had given her in her wardrobe, she found that it had already been filled with Hogwarts school uniforms in her size, complete with black and yellow ties and scarves and socks and, she noted with some amusement, underwear: black with yellow trim and yellow with black.

She turned back to her bed where her pack still lay, a corner of the white binder peeking out. She took the binder from its pack and opened it. The first page was filled with the cards based upon her adventures in Equestria, the Weapon X facility, and Ivalice. When she turned the page, she found three new cards, as she now expected: one representing a lightsaber, one named after Williams' _Imperial March_, and one representing a jedi grandmaster.

She put the grimoire back in the pack and the pack in a drawer of the wardrobe. It should be safe there.

Then she lay down and pulled the covers up to her chin. Though she hadn't spent much time in each world, it seemed like monts since she'd been home. How long had it been since she'd slept? She hadn't gone to bed before falling off the fire escape. She'd been unconscious a few times, but she didn't think that counted.

Either way, she felt exhaustion crawling up her legs to her knees, her waist, her shoulders, and eventually up over her head.


	8. Hogwarts - Part 2

**Hogwarts**

**Part 2**

Hogwarts' library had several window seats. Dor sat at one, staring out over the vast lake wondering if the occasional ripple was evidence of the giant squid or just the wind. She'd spent a week studying in the library without discovering anything that would help her navigate the Blind Eternities, much less find her mother. She'd learned a lot about the theories of a potential Multiverse, but nothing she read mentioned the Blind Eternities or manabonds or anything that sounded like a credible way to navigate the Multiverse.

"What are you reading?"

Dor jumped.

It was Barrett, or Barry as he preferred, and he was giving her his best, biggest, brightest smile. Though he was just a kid, his smile had his classmates, and not a few of the staff, charmed.

"I, uh…" she flipped the book closed to look at the title. "Multiverse in the Stars: How Astronomy Tells the Fates of Other Worlds."

Barry blinked. "Wow. What a title."

"Professor Sinestra suggested it. What are you doing here?"

"We missed you at breakfast. Aelf says you didn't come back to the basement last night. So," he pulled from his robes three pumpkin cakes, two apples, and a goblet of orange juice, "I brought you breakfast."

"How?" Dor pointed at the goblet.

Barry grinned, flourishing his wand. "Magic of course. Have you wondered why your kind of magic doesn't require a wand but mine does?"

Dor smiled. "Yours doesn't necessarily, but that lesson comes later. I've always wanted a magic wand."

Barry held his out to her. "Would you like to see it?"

Dor paused before accepting. "Are you sure? Wands were personal, aren't they?"

"Sure. I trust you."

She took it gingerly. She didn't know how her own magic would interact with it and vice versa.

"Mahogany, twelve inches, unicorn hair," said Barry. "Mr. Olivander told me it'd be good for charms. But it's pretty good with enchantments too. I enchanted the goblet not to spill."

Dor handed it back. "You know, if Madam Pince sees you've brought food into her library, she's going to spank your bottom."

Barry laughed. "No she won't. I'm too cute."

Despite herself, Dor laughed and picked up one of the little cakes. "Don't you have a class to be in?"

"It's only History of Magic."

"I'm sure Professor Binns doesn't care how cute your smile is."

Barry shrugged. "Have you found what you're looking for?"

Dor shook her head. "There's some interesting theory about the nature of the multiverse, but…" She sighed. "There's no mention of planeswalkers or the spark or the Blind Eternities. Nothing to help me find what I'm looking for." She looked at her mother's bracelet, glinting in the sun: silver links adorned with an emerald, pearl, and sapphire. Those gems together in that order meant something, and Dor felt like an idiot for not figuring it out until now.

"Bant."

"Hmm? What's a Bant?" Barry asked.

"It's a place. Barry, you don't really want to go back to class, do you?"

He grinned his cute grin. "What's up?"

"We need to search the library for any mention of a plane or world called Bant. Or, for that matter, Alara, or Shards of Alara. Okay?"

"You're getting all excited for research?"

Dor winked at him. "Thanks for bringing me breakfast, now get looking."

After three hours of searching, they didn't find any mention of Bant or Alara nor its other shards. Barry patted Dor on the shoulder consolingly.

"Would you hate me if I said I was glad we didn't find anything?"

"What? Why?"

"If you figure out how to get wherever it is you're going, then you'll leave. I don't want you to leave." He cast his gaze at the table. "I'm sorry."

Dor slung an arm around her shoulders. "That's sweet, Barry. Thanks."

At the feast that night, Dor found herself restless. Sandra and Aelf and Eldora all tried to engage her in conversation, but she responded in half formed sentences. She couldn't stop staring at her mother's bracelet—her father had always told her that her mother was an angel; perhaps he'd been being literal. And the spell it cast, or helped her cast—banish a creature, destroy an artifact, counter a spell—it was _Bant Charm_. Her mother had left her with a powerful defense.

Later, as they were changing for bed, Eldora gasped. "When did you get that tattoo, Dor?"

"Hmm? Tattoo?" She looked around at the girl who'd already changed into her night dress.

"On your back," Eldora said, her dark eyes wide.

Dor craned to see and found that she could just make out the inked outline of a curve on her shoulder blade. She bit her tongue on a curse. The girls all crowded around to see.

"Wow," Sandra said. "That wasn't there yesterday. Is it magic?"

"You look like an angel," Aelf added.

The inside of their wardrobe doors housed full-length mirrors, and Dor used hers to inspect the detailed image of a pair of wings that appeared to have been tattooed to her back, from her shoulders to just above the curve of her hips. The downy inner feathers were shaded pale blue whereas the tips of the longer ones shaded to pale green, otherwise, the feathers were white—Bant colors.

Aelf touched her gently and Dor shivered. "They look so real, but they feel like skin."

* * *

Barry made a habit of skipping History of Magic to come to see her in the library.

"You're gonna get in trouble," Dor scolded him.

"Nah, I'm getting top marks in all my classes."

"Shouldn't you be a Ravenclaw then?"

Barry shrugged. "I like playing fair. Oh! Do you wanna see the charms I learned today? Professor Flitwick said I'm progressing very fast. He taught them to me special."

Barry pulled his wand from inside his robe with a flourish that sent gold and violet sparks into the air.

"Not here," Dor hissed. "If we start slinging spells in the library, Madam Pince really will spank us both."

Barry giggled. "Outside then?"

But Dor had an idea. "No. Follow me." She took Barry's hand and led him from the library under the stern gaze of Madam Pince. "Let's see. It's on the fifth… no the seventh floor, I think. And there's a picture of some wizard teaching tapdance to orcs."

Barry giggled again.

"I don't suppose you know the picture?"

"Nope. This is your bright idea, remember?"

They made it to the seventh floor all right, but then Dor took a wrong turn, going right when they should have gone left and it took nearly half an hour to find the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls ballet.

"Okay, now we have to walk past the spot three times thinking about what we need," Dor said.

"That makes no sense," Barry replied.

Dor gave him an exhasperated look. "It's a magic castle. Just go with it."

He shrugged. "I'll walk; you think."

So they held hands and walked back and forth while Dor thought about a space that would let them practice magic. Truly, they could have done this in any old classroom, but the chance to use the Room of Requirment was too good to pass up. When they were done, a door had appeared.

"Wow," said Barry.

"Come on," said Dor.

On the other side, they found a spacious room.

"Wow," said Barry again. "It's a big, empty room." His tone betrayed his sarcasm.

Dor stuck her tongue out at him. "It's a secret room that we won't get caught practicing magic in. And you won't get caught playing hookey from History of Magic."

That perked him up. "Cool."

"So, what did you want to show me?"

"Oh. Right." He pulled his wand from his robe, pointed it at Dor, and shouted "Stupefy!"

Dor's vision exploded. For several moments, she didn't know what had happened. When her vision cleared and she realized she was flat on her back, her ears still ringing, she understood that Barry had practiced his new magic on her.

"Dor! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't realize it'd be so big!"

Dor heard Barry's voice as though from far away. She sat up to find him several feet away, his hands behind his back, his eyes wide. She shook her head and got unsteadily to her feet.

"Are you all right?"

Dor nodded as her hearing returned to normal. "But next time point that thing somewhere else."

"We need, like, a practice dummy or something."

Dor nodded, then looked around and, as she'd expected, the Room of Requirement provided. A vaugley man shaped dummy holding a stick approximating a staff had appeared in the center of the room.

She gestured. "There you go."

Barry smiled at her. "You're not mad?"

"No," she said grumpily.

"You're not going to spank me?"

That made her laugh. "Really, I'm not mad. If I could cast 'stupefy', I'd be just as excited."

"You can't?" Barry looked confused. "I thought you could cast all kinds of magic."

Dor shrugged.

"I'll bet you can. Come on, you try." He held his wand out to her.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Come on."

Dor took the wand. It felt good in her hand. She closed her eyes and focused on the warmth of magic. Certainly her magic, the magic of mana and planeswalking was different from the magic of this universe, magic of wands and incantations. Could she even use a wand? Would the words that worked for Barry work for her?

"Stupefy!"

A brief burst of teal-ish light sparked from the wand.

"You did it!" Barry crowed.

"No I didn't."

"Well you kind of did. Try again."

Indeed, she'd felt the warm power of her magic channel through the wand and the word. Maybe she could do it.

Her next try was just as pitiful, but her second made the dummy move slightly, and her third produced a full flash of teal light and pushed the back a bit. It was nothing compared to what Barry could do, but it wasn't bad.

Next he showed her Expelliarmus, knocking the staff from the dummy's hands. When Dor tried to do the same, the staff barely budged.

For an hour, Barry showed her how to hold the wand, demonstrated enunciation, and demonstrated flicking techniques. And when the hour was up and Barry had to go to his next class, Dor returned to the library, but not before they promised to practice together again tomorrow.

* * *

She dreamed of her parents.

They walked the snow-covered paths of Christmas, bundled against the cold in hats and scarves and mittens. The old toymaker had assured them the streets would be safe tonight and he was never wrong about such things.

* * *

When she woke, Dor couldn't breath for the ache in her heart.

She'd spent a month and a half at Hogwarts, reading in the library, practicing magic with Barry, and making friends with Sandra, Aelf, and Eldora. She had grown comfortable at Hogwarts, and nearly forgotten about the possibility of looking for her mother.

She felt wretched.

The girls were waking and getting dressed. Dor followed suit, depressed at at the idea of another fruitless day in the library

She didn't meet Barry at the Room of Requirement.

She skipped dinner.

And that night, once the girls fell asleep, Dor donned the clothes given her by the Holy Mother. The robe had a charred hole in the right shoulder where she'd been shot on Kashyyyk, but she wore it anyway. She packed her nightie and shorts, and grimoire, into her backpack. It didn't feel right to take the school uniforms, but she did take the socks and underwear. Adventuring with only a single pair of socks and underwear sounded distinctly uncomfortable, and she'd had enough of that.

After a month and a half, Dor knew how to get from the Hufflepuff basement to the front doors of the castle by rote. The doors were locked tight for the night.

"If you're going outside, you'll need a scarf."

Dor jumped and cursed.

Barry joined her from the shadows, holding out a black and yellow Hufflepuff scarf to her. She took it automatically, still wondering at the details that hadn't been in the books but had been in the movies and vice versa. Were there multiple versions of these events and details, or only one version that had been interpreted in multiple ways on her home world?

To Barry, she said, "You're out after curfew,"

"So are you. You missed practice today. I was hoping you'd show me your Bant Charm."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. You're still my favorite."

Dor chuckled. "You're quite the charmer, you know that Barret O'Madigan?"

He grinned, his smile shining in the dark, but he quickly turned somber. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

Dor nodded. "I would love to stay here, be a Hufflepuff, live and learn at Hogwarts, just as I'd love to study with Twilight Sparkle or the Order of White Mages, or fight with the X-Men or Rebel Alliance. But I must get to Bant and find my mother. I can't stay." She held the scarf back out to him, blinking back tears.

"Keep the scarf. You may not be staying, but you're still a Hufflepuff. The Sorting Hat said so, and the Sorting Hat is never wrong."

She wrapped the scarf around her neck, sought the spark or warmth in her mind, and stepped through it.

* * *

**Expelliarmus! **WWW

Instant

Unattach all cards attached to target creature. Its base power becomes 0 until end of turn.

* * *

**Stupefy! **WW

Instant

Tap target creature. It does not untap during its controllers next untap phase.

* * *

**Wizard's Wand **3

Tribal Artifact—Wizard Equipment

Equipped creature's activated abilities cost 1 mana of any type less.

If equipped creature is a Wizard, its activated abilities cost 2 mana of any type less.

Equip 1


	9. Outworld

**06. Outworld**

She 'walked into of a warzone.

The barren plane of cracked, trampled earth, ringed by jagged claws of stone, was dominated by an enormous, stepped pyramid lit by crackling, fire-orange light that spewed from its crown into the dirty clouds that hung low in the sky. Below the clouds, greasy-feathered vultures circled the bloody chaos she stood amid.

All around her, the heroes, villains, and warriors of _Mortal Kombat_ raged. She watched, wide-eyed as numerous tarkatans, their sharp, shiny teeth and arm blades gleaming in the light from the pyramid rushed the battlefield, led by a blood-spattered tarkatan warrior—Baraka.

They were met by a cryomantic lin kuei in ceremonial blue dress, his arms and breath misting in the heat. The scar over his right eye revealed him to be the younger brother, the second to take the name Sub-Zero, rather than the man who had become Noob Saibot.

Sub-Zero hurled ice at the tarkatan warriors. Some froze where they stood, suffocating in a prison of ice, some were impaled upon spears of ice, some stumbled as they were frozen and shattered into a million meaty shards. Baraka himself evaded the cryogenic missiles, closing with cryomancer. Sub-Zero fell into a defensive stance, summoning a blade of ice as he did so, and parried Baraka's first flurry of attacks.

"What is this? Such a tasty morsel for such a bloody battlefield." Kano's thick accent wasn't hard to recognize.

Dor crouched and spun. The scruffy man with a red, glowing, cybernetic eye loomed over her. He held a broad-bladed, hooked, bloodied knife and he flipped it casually as he regarded her. Kano had always been her least favorite _Mortal Kombat_ character: his vile crudeness made her skin itch even as only a character on a screen.

Dor felt her wrist go warm and she summoned a wand very much like Barry's from the æther.

Kano laughed. "Is that all? Why, I'd like to take you and—"

But she never got to hear what he might have done with her, for a bolt of lightning struck his chest and threw him back.

A shock of fear stabbed though her, but when she turned, she found that it was not the evil stepmother, but Lord Raiden, God of Storms and Guardian of Earthrealm. The stoic deity turned warrior fixed her with a solemn gaze.

"This is no place for a little girl. Flee if you can, child."

But Dor was concerned with the flickering distortion she saw behind the one-time deity. Giving herself to the immediacy of the battlefield, Dor opened her mind to the power of the manabonds and the power at her wrist. The pressure of the power built behind her eyes before erupting in a crimson stream of light that struck Reptile before he could strike Lord Raiden from behind.

Raiden glanced at Reptile, gave her a small smile and a nod of thanks, then advanced upon Kano, who was struggling to his feet, a blackened mark burned through his dirty white gi, still smoking. Raiden grasped the woozy criminal about his scruffy throat.

"Someone should have rid the realms of scum such as you long ago," Raiden growled. His hand began to glow with crackling white energy. Kano began to convulse in his grip.

Dor looked away.

She recognized this scene. It was the end of Armageddon, the beginning of Lord Raiden's attempt to avoid disaster by sending visions to himself back in time. Whether or not he was to be successful, this particular battlefield would soon be strewn with the corpses of warriors far more capable than her. Lord Raiden was right; she needed to flee.

But fleeing required closed eyes and concentration, and nearby, Reptile was regaining his feet, dusting himself off and glaring at her, his acidic saliva dripping from his pointed teeth and slavering tongue.

She pointed her wand at him.

She was saved from kombat with the monster by a large, brown-pelted wolf with shining green eyes. It lunged at Reptile, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him down. In a blink of green light, the wolf was replaced by Nightwolf, who raised his glowing right hand where a tomahawk shimmered into existence, and brought it down on Reptile's neck with a fatal thunk.

The shaman turned his glowing green eyes on her, and for a terrifying moment, she thought he would turn his weapons on her as well. But then he sprinted past her on his way to engage some other warrior.

Despite her rising panic, Dor took a moment to consider. The kombatants were all focused on each other, unconcerned with the little girl in their midst. For the moment. But, if she were to begin summoning creatures and slinging spells, she'd definitely attract their attention. While they were all focused on each other, she had a chance to planeswalk before she was attacked.

Deciding it was worth the risk, Dor took another deep breath, closed her eyes, and pictured the spark in her mind.

A sudden pounding of feet snapped her eyes open a moment later.

She didn't see the hideous tarkatan until he was upon her. She threw her hands up in an involuntary, defensive motion. He slashed at her and the shock of the blow choked the scream of pain so that the scream built within her chest. Though her vision blurred, she could see that where her left hand had been was now a bloody stump. And as she watched, Baraka reared back to attack again.

She gasped involuntarily as the bloodied blade protruding from his right arm slid through her stomach like a stick through water. Incongruously, she wondered which heroes' blood now mingled with hers on Baraka's blade. His left arm, she noted, hung useless, at his side, darkened by frost.

_The white mage._ The thought teased over the bubble of pain and fear that swelled within her.

Because he was so much taller than her, he'd had to stoop to impale her through the stomach. He began to stand, slowly, so that her weight dragged her down his arm blade.

Dor screamed, high, bright, and clear, but it was lost in the chaos of Armageddon.

_The white mage._

A blur of motion split Baraka's face in half. She recognized Kung Lao's razor-rimmed hat. Warm relief flooded her body as Baraka fell and she slid off his blade. She stared up at the dirty, yellow-orange clouds. She could feel her pulse radiating out from her chest; she could feel it slowing, inexorably. Kung Lao, the would-be pacifist, stood over her for a moment, sparing her a look of pity, then moved on.

_The white mage._

Detached, as though a separate consciousness, Dor shoved at the window in her mind. It wouldn't budge. But the bracelet at her wrist, the one with a hand still attached, began to grow warm.

_Emerald. Peal. Sapphire. Perhaps it doesn't hold a spell. Perhaps it's a source of power._

She mentally flipped through her girmoire and felt it grow warm at her back. Her whole body began to feel warm and her shoulders began to itch, as though something within wanted to be freed. She settled on the page that held the white mage. She tried to shape the warmth that fled her body with her lifeblood. She tried to pull at the æther. She tried to summon a white mage.

She coughed once, and the yellow-orange clouds faded to black.

It seemed only a moment later that her vision returned and she struggled to her feet, hale and whole. All around her were the broken bodies of the Mortal Kombatants. At the crown of the pyramid, flashes of light gave evidence to the final conflict between Lord Raiden and Shao Kahn.

Dor put her hands on her stomach. The dress given her by the Holy Mother was pierced with a ragged hole two inches in diameter. It was crusty with dried blood, but only a small, star-shaped scar remained of the wound. Though there was no evidence of an ætheric white mage, she must have been successful.

And yet, something felt odd, off. Where had been her left hand was now a smooth stump. The white mage had healed her but had not regenerated the hand. At her feet rested the severed hand, some of the meat already torn away by the carrion-feeding birds. Her stomach roiled and she vomited onto the field of battle. Not so long ago, she'd lived and studied in a magical castle, safe and secure. Now she stood among broken, eviscerated corpses, her own left had nothing but carrion.

She vomited again, falling to her knees.

The evil stepmother's mad cackle recalled her to her senses

Dor looked up to see the crazy woman striding toward her among the dead, her hands blood-soaked.

"What amazing worlds you've lead me too, child. Such violence and destruction. I thought you would hide in that accursed castle forever, but no, you've come out to play. And I am ever so grateful." She licked the back of her left hand, the blood dripping from her tongue.

"Run away, little girl. Don't worry, I'll follow. I just have a little more to do here first."

Dor closed her eyes, summoned the spark, and 'walked through.

* * *

**Interlude**

**II. The Blind Eternities**

Inscrutable, unknowable, amorphous—the æther in between.

The Blind Eternities, was a place without form where her senses, as she usually thought of them, did no good. She did not stand on a path, there were no signposts. She could see greyscale colors and taste roses and clouds and plastic. She knew what it was to feel pale brown light and hear the song of nothing.

What did make sense, what kept her grounded and protected and alive in this inhospitable space between, was the spark of light in her mind. It gave her a sense of how to navigate—or at least not disintegrate—in the Blind Eternities. Through it, she could feel or see or smell a variety of places that she had no name for: that one was made of molten fudge, that one was covered in eternal night, that one was encased in a thick, glass, bottle.

A guiding thought returned to her: _I'm looking for my mother_.

But how was she to find a single person, even an angel, among all these grains of sand, on a beach that stretched to eternity, in an eternity that uptipped all sense of anything and nothing and inbetween which no could ever have guided a single notion?

And more than that: _I'm fleeing my stepmother_.

She wondered if it mightn't be safer to hide in the Blind Eternities. But that thought was quickly dismissed. She could already feel herself losing cohesion. She had to end up somewhere, anywhere, or be obliterated.

* * *

**Storm Guardian **3WW

Creature—Elemental Monk

Flying

WW: Exile Storm Guardian, then return it to the battlefield under you control.

WW, T: Deal 2 damage to target attacking creature.

[3/4]

* * *

**Arctic Lin Kuei **4U

Snow Creature—Human Ninja

Ninjutsu UUU

Whenever Arctic Lin Kuei deals combat damage to a player, tap up to two target creatures he or she controls and put an ice counter on them.

U, Q: Destroy target creature with an ice counter on it.

[3/3]

* * *

**Wolf-Totem Shaman **1GG

Creature—Human Shaman

Protection from Black

GG: Transform Wolf-Totem Shaman

/other face/

**Kombative Wolf**

Creature—Wolf

Provoke

GG: Transform Kombative Wolf

[4/4]


	10. Air Temple Island

**07. Air Temple Island**

She 'walked onto a wide, flag-stoned plaza. Before her rose a tall, tile-roofed building around which soared enormous, shaggy, horned hexapods she knew to be sky bison. Despite their bulk, they floated like leaves on the wind.

Based upon the sky bison, the architecture, and the sound of wave upon shore none too distant, she concluded she was on Air Temple Island, near Republic City.

After the chaos of the Armageddon, the quiet of the air temple plaza left a ringing in her ears, mitigated by the cool breeze carrying autumn on its breath.

A shadow fell over her, and Dor looked up to find one of the massive skybison circling, about to land. Atop the bison was a bearded man in saffron robes and ritual tattoos of an airbender. The enormous sky bison touched down with the ease of a sparrow. It growled low in its throat.

Dor steeled herself. The sky bison would not harm her unless the airbender prompted it to. Airbenders preferred non-violent solutions, but the grim look on the bearded man's face made her nervous. She stepped forward and bowed respectfully.

"Master airbender, I—"

"You must leave this place at once. You are trespassing." She recognized the voice of Tenzin, son of Avatar Aang.

Dor nodded and prepared to planeswalk again, happy to get as many planes between her and the evil stepmother as possible, but her last image of the crazy woman was burned in her mind, and she felt her chest clench.

The evil stepmother would follow her here as she'd followed her everywhere else, chasing her across the planes she stumbled through, and Air Temple Island did not have the defenses of Hogwarts or Ponyville or even an Ivilacian army. Master Tenzin could take care of himself, But the chances of the non-bender acolytes or his young family against a planeswalker of the evil stepmother's power were slim. If she left and the evil stepmother decided to stay, she could never forgive herself.

Dor shook her head. "Master Tenzin, I'm afraid I can't do that. I am being pursued by a powerful, sadistic mage. I fear that if I leave and she were to encounter you, or your family, she would do great harm."

Tenzin looked skeptical. "Mage?"

Dor spread her arms. "Look at me, do I look like I come from around here? How did I get on the island? Please, you have to listen to me."

Tenzin looked unconvinced, but then a thought occurred to her. She could show him she was telling the truth. She cast the spell that approximated Marvel Girl's powers of telepathy and opened her mind to the airbender. His eyes went very wide, then his expression turned stern.

"What have you brought here?" he demanded.

"I am so very sorry that she's following me here," Dor said. "There may still be time to evacuate."

Tenzin's expression softened.

But whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by a tingle of magic tickling her mind. It was not her spark, but it was _a_ spark. Someone was planeswalking. A spicy, malodorous taste stung her tongue and a small explosion of fire and sulfur stained the courtyard. The evil stepmother appeared in the middle of the minor conflagoration.

Dor could read the evil stepmother's surface thoughts, a chaotic mix of desire and pain, a lust for battle and blood. But beneath that was fear, fear of a shadowed man with glowing blue eyes and a piercing demeanor. It was he, Dor understood, who had ordered the evil stepmother to seduce her father and steal her mother's bracelet.

Distracted by the telepathy, Dor wasn't ready for the javelin of fire.

But Tenzin was there. And like the friends she'd made across the Multiverse of her favoriate fiction, he protected her. With a sweep of his arm, he generated an aerokinetic shield. At the same time, he grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her aside, all gentle and easy, a leaf on the wind. The fiery projectile was deflected harmlessly against the flagstones.

Dor reached for her power, growing warm all over, and she shaped the æther. She summoned a white mage and the evil stepmother summoned a stink of goblins. The white mage chanted a spell of protection but was cut off by a blade of darkness. The goblins rushed Dor, but Tenzin knocked them off their feet with a forceful gale.

The evil stepmother turned her attention to Tenzin, prepared to cast _Lightning Bolt_. Dor could see it in her mind as though looking at her hand of cards, and she pulled at the power of the bracelet. Even as the yellow-white light of lightning leapt from the evil woman's hand, a swirl of white, green, and blue leapt from Dor's and the lightning fizzled. It was easy: a thought, a flick of the wrist, and the card played in her mind.

Tenzin followed Dor's move with another blast of wind that knocked the evil stepmother to the courtyard floor.

Dor conjured the _Imperial March_ and the steady, brooding song played in her mind, summoning a trooper with each downbeat. She felt the ætheric echos as extensions of herself and set them to engaging the goblins, their superior firepower, range, and tactis making short work of them.

For a moment, Dor felt like she was winning.

But the evil stepmother was fast. From where she lay prone, she let loose a barrage of spells composed of lightning, lava, and fire; crimson chaos fire descended upon her and her troopers in the blink of an eye. Some fell. There was shouting and roaring and Dor cursed herself for not being fast enough.

_That's what instants are for!_

She summoned a wand from the æther then cast the carbunkle's power, protecting her and her remaining troopers in a shield of light.

In the moment of peace that followed, Dor saw that the evil stepmother had already summoned a chittering of imps. Three of her troopers had been felled by the evil stepmother's volley, their bodies already dissolving into æther. Dor winced.

But the _Imperial March_ still played in her head and another trooper appeared at her side. And the _Psychic Advantage_ still showed her the evil stepmother's thoughts. She glimpsed among them a blood-hungry dragon.

_I have to stop her now._

Dor closed her eyes, mentally flipped through her grimoire and stopped on the card representing Nightwolf, the wolf-totem shaman of _Mortal Kombat_. The warmth of magic filled her and in a shimmering of green light, the shaman appeared. She pointed him to the evil stepmother and he sprinted for her, a glowing green tomahawk in each hand.

The evil stepmother screamed and hurled a blade of shadow at the shaman, but he shrugged it off and hurled one of his own weapons in return. The tomahawk clipped her shoulder and a spray of blood spattered the courtyard flagstones.

Dor knew a moment of elation. The evil stepmother could be hurt, she bled, she could be beaten.

An oily-skinned imp with claws like daggers landed on the shaman, sinking its claws into his back. The shaman hacked at it with his remaining tomahawk and both dissolved into æther.

Dor was prepared to summon another combatant when a sudden gust of wind swept Dor off her feet. It would have sent her tumbling, but she used Twilight's blink and landed on her feet.

Tenzin stood nearby, his arms moving in circular patterns as he tossed the imps and goblins summoned by the evil stepmother about like scraps of paper. Oogie, his sky bison hovered nearby, primed to defend his human partner..

"Leave this place at once, foul witch!" the master airbender demanded, his voice amplified by his power.

"Die, interfering monk!" the evil stepmother screeched. And Dor could see the vampiric dragon in the evil woman's mind taking shape in the æther.

Tenzin took a defensive stance.

Dor took advantage of her distraction.

The pressure of magic built behind her eyes. She felt warm all over and her shoulders began to itch. She poured all the power from beyond the window in her mind and the charms on her bracelet into the optic blast, even as the evil stepmother focused her gaze on Dor.

Dor let loose the blast of ruby light.

With a curse, a scream, and gout of oily fire, the evil stepmother disappeared before she could be obliterated. Her summoned creatures dissolved to nothingness.

Dor took a deep breath and reached for her spark and as she did so, she could taste the spicy trail of the evil stepmother. She held on to that taste determined not to let her go.

And now she pursued the evil stepmother.

* * *

**Aerokinetic Shield **2WW

Tribal Enchantment—Monk

Flying

If a creature would deal combat damage to you, prevent 2 of that damage.

* * *

**Sky Bison **3GU

Creature—Beast

Flying

[4/8]


	11. Narnia

**08. Narnia**

She leapt through the spark in her mind, and for the second time since leaving Hogwarts, onto a battlefield.

Dor stood on a rocky plane in knee-high grass while nearby a cheetah wrestled with an axe-wielding dwarf, a centaur dueled with a minotaur, and a faun dodged the feet of a giant.

The evil stepmother shrieked with laughter. "Another war! You're too kind, brat!"

Dor spun about and caught a glimpse of the evil stepmother dodging through the warriors. Wand still in hand, she gestured and shouted, "Stupefy!" Her spell went wide, hitting a dwarf instead who was immediately set upon by another dwarf.

"Come and get me, little girl, come and get me!" The woman shrieked and laughed as she ran. Lightning bolts and explosions erupted in her wake.

Dor gave pursuit. But the chaos of battle required her to watch all around, dodging dwarven axes and centaur hooves and rocks dropped by griffins from far above.

Wand in hand, Dor pulled at the æther and shaped it with the card in her mind: _Unicorn Prodigy_. The lavender unicorn appeared next to her and knelt so that Dor could clamber onto her back. With the ætheric unicorn like an extension of herself, she could see more the battlefield. Further, four legs were faster and more agile than two.

A minotaur roared and charged her with a battle axe larger than she was. Dor flicked her wand at him.

"Expelliarmus!" The battle axe went flying and thunked harmlessly into the ground. "Stupefy!" The minotaur collapsed, stunned.

For a moment, Dor looked about and thought she'd lost the evil stepmother. But her enchanted telepathy was still in effect and though the thoughts around her were as chaotic as the battle, there was one set of thoughts that was particularly malicious.

The unicorn surged under her, galloping through the combat with deft ease. Dor kept the girmoire forefront in her mind. When a hail of arrows fell upon her, she swept an arm over her head, casting them aside with a shield of air. When a squad of wolves charged her, the unicorn blasted them with a beam of purple light. When a giant lumbered toward her, intent on crushing her underfoot, she teleported aside and hurried on. Wand in hand and unicorn underneath, her magic came quicker and easier.

She broke through the conflict, following the malicious thoughts, into a clear area in front of a pair of massive polar bears pulling a war chariot. Upon the chariot stood a pale skinned woman wearing a dirty white dress topped with a ruff of a lion's mane.

"Jadis," Dor whispered, her eyes going wide.

The White Witch, the Scourge of Charn, looked at her curiously, as though a puzzle to be dissected.

A griffin plummeted out of the sky, trying to take advantage of the White Witch's distraction, but the evil woman leaned aside, dodging the talons of the creature while simultaneously striking it with her crystalline rod. The griffin turned to stone mid-flight and shattered on the ground. The White Witch smiled as she returned her gaze to Dor.

An explosion drew their attention, deep in the morass of conflict. The thoughts of the evil stepmother radiated from that explosion. Dor looked from the explosion to the White Witch. If all went as the book described, the White Witch would soon fall. But with the evil stepmother here, who knew what would happen, what butterflies would be crushed. Dor's responsibility was to handle the evil stepmother.

But she was afraid to turn her back on the White Witch.

And as the evil woman spurred her chariot forward, pointing her crystalline rod at Dor, Dor pulled had at the manabonds, her body going warm with magic. Her shoulders itching at the ready.

"For Aslan," she whispered.

From her wand burst white light coalescing into the form of Lord Raiden, lightning sparking from fists and eyes. The ætheric echo hurled himself at the White Witch, embodiment of storms riding the wind and howling with fury.

With the White Witch distracted, she shaped the æther again, summoning a great sky bison. She and the unicorn blinked into the bison's saddle as it heaved it's great, flat tail and leapt into the air on currents of air, graceful as a sparrow.

Dor felt a pang of guilt, leaving the echo of Lord Raiden behind, likely to fall at the hands of the White Witch despite his power. She reminded herself that she had not pulled the warrior monk from his home plane, that she had constructed him from memories and æther.

The unicorn lay down on the saddle as the sky bison soared over the battlefield. Dor stood and sought out the remains of the explosion. A scorched circle of the plain, littered with the bodies of members of both armies, quickly caught her eye, but she could not see the evil stepmother.

Her search was interrupted by an eagle scream and a griffin flew over her, close enough to attack, though it held its claws. Dor ducked, wand at the ready. The unicorn tensed. A formation of griffins surrounded them. But the griffins were on Aslan's side, she remembered. Even so, she held her power at the ready.

"You visit at an inconvenient time, stranger." the griffin called over the wind and sounds of combat.

Dor laughed at his cheeky tone. "My apologies, master griffin," she shouted in return. "I chase a terrible witch of my own. I'm afraid she'll prove devastating to your forces if I don't stop her."

"Your power suggests you're a witch yourself."

Dor shrugged. "Maybe so. But I'm a good witch, promise." She raised her wand. "For Aslan!"

The griffin laughed and spun in the air. "For Aslan!" he returned and let loose an eagle's scream.

A gout of flame shot up at her left flank. The griffin she'd been talking to was consumed in the fire and fell, blackened and burning. A moment later, a dragon, a sleek, red and black scaled beast shot above her, unfurled its wings with a sharp snap and hung on a moment. The evil stepmother was astride its shoulders, shadow and fire wreathing her like a hellish halo.

Dor shrank back in fear. The wand fell from her grip and dissipated on the wind. The unicorn whimpered, shimmered, and was gone. Dor felt her mind retreating, her will giving way.

A trio of griffins descended upon the evil stepmother and her dragon from above. The screams of fury cutting through the terror.

"Terror," Dor whispered. "She was trying to frighten us to death."

"Foolish creatures!" screeched the evil stepmother. She launched a geyser of flame and one griffin fell. She made to attack again, but Dor stood and extended her hand. An axe of lava started to take shape then fizzled. One of the griffins raked the side of the dragon as another danced in the air dodging its jaws.

The evil stepmother gestured and shouted and a horde of imps appeared in a swirl of smoke. The imps dove for Dor. She thought of the Holy Mother and her white magic. With a gesture of her own, imps were banished in a flash of white light. But not all of them. The fell upon Dor and the sky bison, clawing and tearing. Dor batted at them, trying to concentrate enough to cast another banishing spell. Beneath her, the sky bison bucked and bellowed.

Dor blasted ruby energy from her eyes and the imps fell away. She winced at the sounds on her arms where she'd tried protect herself. The sky bison generated a blast of air to push away the imps attacking it.

The dragon spewed a gout of flame at the griffin before it. The griffin dipped aside, but the dragon was fast and canny, anticipating the move and catching the griffin in its jaws. It clamped down and the griffin screamed before its back was broken and its blood spilled over the dragon's jaws. The dragon kept his jaws locked around the body and lifted its head, pulling at its blood.

_Vampiric Dragon_.

The last of the trio of griffins screamed and dove for the dragon, but the evil stepmother stabbed at it, a blade of shadow leaping from her hand to impale the brave creature.

Dor could feel her breath coming faster, her shoulders shaking, her thoughts crumbling. She was tired. She didn't know how much longer she could continue the fight, the pursuit, the chase across planes.

_You have to stop her. She's your responsibility_. Dor told herself sternly. If she gave up or ran away, how might the evil stepmother alter events on Narnia? Could Aslan defeat two evil witches?

And then came a wave of energy, magic born on the roar of a lion. Like the sun bursting over the horizon, Aslan's reinforcements arrived on the ridge below, not far from them.

This was the turning point in the battle for Narnia.

The evil stepmother screeched and clamped her hands over her ears.

Dor willed the sky bison higher, buoyed by Aslan's roar even as the evil stepmother was buffeted by it. A volley of centaur archers fired into the battle below them, but some aimed for the dragon and the foreign witch atop it. That gave Dor enough time to rise higher. She stood at the edge of the saddle and looked down at the evil stepmother, recovering from Aslan's battle cry. She pulled at the æther and shaped it into the form of a lightsaber, ignited and at the ready, its teal glow and steady hum giving her confidence. The warm of magic enfolded her and her shoulders itched. The itch grew and, without giving herself time to think, Dor leapt from the sky bison's back, letting it dissipate back to æther.

As she fell toward the evil stepmother, lightsaber poised to strike, the intensity of the itch at her shoulders grew and the warmth of the magic focused there. And, finally, great feathered wings burst from her back, guiding her fall.

At the last moment, the vampiric dragon looked up at her, letting loose a jet of flame.

On instinct, Dor shifted her wings, dodged to the side and swiped at the dragon's neck with her lightsaber. The dragon's head separated from its body and the dragon dissipated to nothing. The evil stepmother screamed as she fell. Dor could feel her reaching for the place between planes, and she followed.

* * *

**Aslanic Battlecry **4WW

Sorcery

You may put any number of green, white, and/or blue creature cards from your hand onto the battlefield.

* * *

**Narnian Griffin **1WU

Creature—Griffin

Flying, first strike

[2/3]

* * *

**Centaur Archer **2GW

Creature—Centaur Archer

Vigilance

T: Centaur Archer deals 1 damage to target attacking creature.

[3/3]


	12. Castlevania

**09. Castlevania**

Darkness oppressed the landscape. A multi-spired castle loomed before her. An impossibly large, yellow moon dominated the sky behind the castle, casting it into silhouette. Dor stumbled against a large, jutting stone and fell to her knees.

Her wings were gone, as were her telepathy and her lightsaber. The oppressive darkness of the place had banished them. Her robe hung awkwardly. When the wings had burst through her back, it had ripped the robe. Even as she tried to adjust it, it fell from her torso and caught at her waist. Dor slipped off her backpack and stood letting the robe fall to her ankles, leaving her in a chemise, hose, and slippers.

"You've led me an interesting chase, brat. But this is the end."

Dor whirled and reached for her power, but found the window in her mind shut tight, the spark obscured by a baleful, dirty light. Skeletal hands burst from the ground and pulled her back to her knees. They pushed her back against the stone she'd stumbled against, a tall slab, a headstone. She was in a graveyard. The grasped her about her waist and ankles. More skeletal hands pulled her arms above her head by the wrists and held them tight.

The evil stepmother stepped in front of her, smiling cruelly, her eyes glowing orange. She picked up Dor's backpack and pulled free her slim, white binder, her grimoire and flipped through it. She snorted in disgust and tossed it at Dor's side, within reach if she could have reached. The evil stepmother rooted around in the pack, finding only clothes, and tossed them aside as well.

"I'm not really much of a necromancer, but this place makes it so easy. You've led me to some truly delightful planes. I especially liked the one with all the killing, near its end. Did you have a plan this whole time, or was it just a blind scamper?"

Dor's jaw was tight to keep from chattering. "I…"

"Oh, it doesn't matter." She laughed her false, light laugh.

She knelt next to Dor and took hold of the bracelet at her right wrist. She tugged sharply and it snapped off in her hand. The ever present warmth at her wrist faded and she shivered. The evil stepmother tucked the bracelet into a pouch at her waist.

"Well, now I have what I was after, it's time for some fun." She gestured with her hand and a cruel, hooked knife appeared. It looked like Kano's knife. "What were the chances you'd be a 'walker? True, your parents were, but the spark isn't hereditary." She put the point of the knife at Dor's chest, at the top of her sternum. Dor tried to twist away, but she was held fast.

"And that you'd be so proficient at leaping through them, through planes I'd never seen of before. Startling really." She drew the knife down Dor's chest, tearing the chemise.

She tried for the spark, but still couldn't find it behind the light of the moon. She tried for the window, but this plane shut her off from he lands of her youth. Every spell she'd seen in the grimoire had been white, blue, and green. The colors of Bant. This was a plane of black mana.

"And I must also commend your quick command of mana." She drew the knife down Dor's belly, to the end of the chemise, cutting it open and leaving a line of blood and pain down her center. "But you were so naughty with, running from your mother. Tsk, tsk." She smiled and her teeth glowed In the light of the yellow moon. "I'll have to punish you now." A swirling halo of black and red smoke oozed from the evil woman

Dor tried to control her breathing, to keep her mind from dissolving into fear. She was certain the evil stepmother had more in mind than a simple spanking, no matter how brutal. She tried to think of something, anything to do.

The evil stepmother used the knife tip to push aside the remains of Dor's chemise. Then she put the knife just under Dor's left collarbone just at the shoulder, then traced it underneath and across to her right, leaving another line of blood and pain. The blood dripped in spots, to trickled down her chest to her stomach.

Dor whimpered and twisted aside.

"I killed that fucking unicorn," the evil stepmother said, breathless with delight, eyes wide. Dor couldn't help but stare into those eyes. "I slit her throat and tasted her blood. I cut off her alicorn. Do you have any idea the going price of an alicorn on Ravnica?"

Dor began to shake. She had hoped to draw the evil stepmother away from Twilight Sparkle, not leave her childhood hero to the stepmother's mercy.

"And cleric with the green cat. She begged for mercy before I took out her eye eyes."

Dor began to shake and sob. Her chest heaved with it.

"And the little green man with the sword of light. It was as nothing to extinguish his life. Like pulling wings off a fly."

Dor screamed with fear and pain and fury. She pulled hard against her skeletal bonds.

And though she was held tight, though her wrists were bound, binding wrists only worked because a person's hands were wider than her wrists. Dor's left hand was no more. Her stump slipped free and landed on her open grimoire, tossed aside carelessly by the evil stepmother.

And though this place of black mana denied her access to most her spells, there was one that represented both strict structure and insular despotism, both military conformity and a tyrant's personal power. It could be powered with black mana, and there was plenty of black mana here. She pulled at it and black light swirled from the grimoire.

Williams' _Imperial March_ thundered through her head.

The night was lit with blaster fire. The evil stepmother screeched as she was struck. The skeletal hands loosed.

Dor scrambled to her feet, snatching up her grimoire and running into the dark. She didn't care where she was going, just that she was going. There wasn't time to care; the evil stepmother would make short work of the trooper.

She didn't get far before a long tongue of flame whipped out and snaked around her leg, high on her upper thigh. The fiery burn pulled a scream from her and dragged her to the ground.

The march hit its downbeat and another trooper appeared, firing upon summoning. The fiery bond around her thigh disappeared. She got to her feet again, limping against the burn around her thigh. Ahead of her stood a giant stone angel, arms and wings wide in welcome, though one wing had been broken and lay in rubble at her feet.

Dor scrambled behind it, taking refuge in its shadow. She reached for her spark but it was still behind the moonlight. Dor cursed. What did she have to do to escape this plane of darkness? Did she have to wait for the moon to go down? Did she have to use black mana? Or perhaps there was no escape?

The sound of blaster fire stopped with a strangled shout.

_Come on, Dor, think! The Holy Mother said creativity is key to magic. So, be creative. How do you planeswalk when the plane doesn't want you to?_

And that made her think about _Planechase_, the version of _Magic_ revolving around the jumping from plane to plane. In _Planechase_, there was always a way to escape. Rolling the chaos die always produced a one-in-six chance of escaping one plane for another. So, how could she roll the planar die?

She drew mana through the window in her mind, connections to the lands of her youth. But when she'd cast the _Imperial March_ she'd only had the local mana to work with. So the magic of this plane still worked, she only need to connect with it. But how?

The stone angel above her exploded, raining detritus upon her. She hunched and covered her head with her arms.

"There you are!"

A flaming lash fell across her back, from her right shoulder to her left hip, burning her flesh, setting a chocking sent of burnt meat upon the night air. Dor collapsed. She tried to push herself to her feet, but the pain was too much.

In her head, the march hit its downbeat. A trooper appeared.

Dor knew there wasn't much time. She curled into a ball, as tight as she could, squeezed her eyes shut, and focused. There were the three symbols in her mind: window, grimoire, spark. Only the grimoire was open to her, and most of the spells required mana she had no access to. It was the spark she needed access to. Somehow, she had to make it like the planar die of the game.

"_You have a strong imagination,"_ the Holy Mother had told her.

Dor knew there wasn't much time left. She focused on the spark and imagined a small cube in her hand. The planar die had four blank sides, one side marked with 'chaos' which would cast a spell native to the plane, and one side marked with 'planeswalk' that would take them to a new plane.

In her mind's eye, she tossed the die to an imaginary table where it tumbled and spun and came up blank. She cursed mentally. Only the first cast was free, trying again would require magic.

She felt the trooper destroyed by the evil stepmother.

She drew on the black mana native to this place. It tasted stale. She cast the die again, and again it came up blank.

"Is this it?" demanded the evil stepmother. "You have no fight left in you, brat?"

Dor could feel the heat of the fiery lash. She knew the evil stepmother raised it, poised to strike. She drew the land for mana and cast the planar die. It bounced once… twice… thrice…

* * *

**Interlude**

**III. Chaotic Æther**

Æther clouds between the planes parted before her. The 'walk was easier, more yielding, less stomach-churning this time around. After the burn of the fiery lash, it was downright pleasant. Here she was ephemeral. Here she couldn't feel the pain of the burns.

Dor pressed through the misty, angular nothing and everything of the Blind Eternities, looking for Bant. The Multiverse was a vast beach, each grain of sand its own world, its own plane of existence. Finding one amid the infinite was night impossible.

But the Holy Mother had said she had a strong imagination, and Master Yoda had said she had a well-ordered mind. And she imagined the planes, not as grain of sands, but as cards in her hands. She flipped through them quickly, catching only a few names: Castlevania, Hogwarts, Equestria.

_Bant. I'm looking for Bant._

And as she focused on Bant, the card came to hand. And with the card in hand, the Blind Eternities took some form around her, a winding, twisting path into the clouds of æther on the horizon. The path split and rejoined, overpassed and undercut, twisted and turned in on itself, but in the mist was a green/white/blue swirl of light. Bant, a Shard of Alara, a plane of chivalry and honor and courage, attached to the other Shards by gossamer cables of æther and nothing, waystones and thought.

But then the chaos of the æther reasserted itself. An ætheric barrier asserted itself, and the plane of existence she sought was barred to her. But the route, twisting though it was, remained.

The route required another place, a plane she could 'walk to and from there, perhaps, as a frog hopping across a busy, traffic-laden street, make her way from plane to plane…

* * *

She 'walked into a New York City street, outside an old firehouse, where a crowd had gathered to watch a stream of ghostly light bursting from the top of the firehouse. The echoy screams, moans, and groans of the undead echoed off the concrete canyon of New York.

The pain of the burns on her thigh and her back blazed to life.

Dor could feel the evil stepmother right behind her, so she reached for her spark and…

* * *

She 'walked onto New York City rooftop where a quartet of anthropomorphic turtles traded blows with black-clad ninjas. In the shadows, a razor-armored ninja waited for the right moment to strike.

The burns stabbed into her mind, coating her in sweat, threatening to break her concentration. She reached for…

* * *

She 'walked into a New York City construction site.

A giant gorilla on the other side of a room thirty floors up, with no walls and no roof, lifted a barrel over his head and hurled it at a thick-set handyman armed only with a sledge hammer.

Her body felt aflame. She couldn't keep this up. She reached…


	13. Bant - Part 1

**10. Bant**

**Part 1**

Dor collapsed onto a cobbled street. She coughed and shivered. The burns dug into her mind and shattered her concentration. But the window as open to her. She drew on the fields of her childhood and summoned from the æther a white mage. But it took all the energy she had left to do so. The window slid closed in her mind and she didn't have the strength to open it again.

The healing light of the white mage soothed her.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed herself to her knees. All around her, the denizens of a slate-roofed, stone-walled community were staring at her, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

With the sense of the white mage as an extension of herself, Dor helped herself to her feet. She remembered the state of her clothing, burned and tattered, leaving her largely exposed. She crossed her arms strategically.

"Is this it? Is this Bant?"

But it didn't matter. She was exhausted. She couldn't reach for the window or her spark or the grimoire in her mind. She was done. And she could feel the malodorous, burning spark of the evil stepmother and knew she would appear in moments.

She looked at the ætheric white mage.

"Well, at least I'll go down fighting."

The white mage nodded, determined.

"That's right. Bring it on."

In a burst of smoke and fire, the stink of brimstone, a wave of heat, the evil stepmother appeared. She stood tall, sneering down at Dor, scraps of red silk and black leather revealing brands and tattoos that glowed with magic. Her baleful orange eyes glowed too. She held Kano's dagger in one hand. At her back stood a host of skeletons, imps, and goblins.

The citizens shouted and screamed and scattered. Dor couldn't blame them. She wished she had the energy to do the same, but she was at the end of her life total, and she knew her opponent held a bolt. It was time to scoop her cards and concede defeat.

And yet…

Dor balled her fists and took a step toward the evil stepmother, nearly within arm's reach.

The evil woman laughed. "What other tricks have you got up your sleeve, brat?" She brandished the dagger.

Dor shook her head. "None." She stepped forward again and swung her fist at the evil stepmother's face, connecting with her nose, and a cracking spurt of blood blossomed under her knuckles. The evil stepmother staggered back, one hand on her nose, the other gesturing with the knife, ordering her minions to attack.

Dor kept her fists up, ready to swing again. The white mage began to cast a protective spell.

Everything went white and a powerful gong filled her hearing.

When she could see, she was inside a white, glowing circle inscribed on the cobblestones. A punch-length's way away, the evil stepmother was similarly confined. Her summoned minions were gone. Instead, they were surrounded by a trio of wizards.

"You are under arrest for dueling in the streets," one of them proclaimed. He was the youngest of the three with dark, wavy hair, pale skin, and light brown eyes. He held a staff topped with a blue crystal. On his chest was pinned a golden disc, sigil, sign of favor for a valorous deed.

Dor breathed a sigh of relief and promptly passed out.

* * *

She awoke on a thin, narrow cot in a jail cell, a blanket covering her. When she sat up, she realized she was still clad in the tatters of her clothes, and she clutched the blanket to her. She reached for her power, but when she did so, the bars on the cell, the mortar between the stones of the wall, and the blanket all glowed white and she passed out again.

"Whoa there, are you all right?"

Dor blinked blearily into the face of the wizard who'd proclaimed her under arrest. He looked handsome and concerned and kind. And handsome. Dor fought off a blush and nodded.

"I… what happened?"

"I arrested you."

Dor smiled. "Yes. I heard. I meant with the light, just now."

"Oh, that. You're inside an anti-magic aura. You can't do any sort of magic, or it'll activate."

"And I'll pass out."

He nodded. "I tried to tell them that you're the victim, but I… I kind of arrested you both, so the law says you both have to be held until the hearing. Sorry about that."

"Where's my stepmother?"

His eyes went wide. "That woman is related to you?"

Dor shook her head. "She married my dad. But I'm pretty sure she charmed him with magic. I'm also pretty she killed him."

"Those are serious charges."

"She also chased me across the Multiverse trying to steal my mother's…" She sat up suddenly and he had to hurry back. She reached for her right wrist. Her left stub encountered a bare wrist. At the same time her blanket fell to her waist.

The boy promptly turned his back.

Dor scrambled to pull the blanket back around her shoulders.

"Any chance of some clothes?" Dor asked.

"Prisoners held in an anti-magic aura aren't permitted to request supplies. We don't know what ways you have of getting around the aura."

Dor sighed. "You can turn around now."

He peaked over his shoulder, then turned. "Sorry," he offered.

"Huron!"

Dor started at the shout, and the young man who'd arrested her did too. He turned to face the room outside her cell and saluted.

"Sir Ives!"

"What are you doing in the prisoner's cell?"

"She…"

"You're careless. Come out of there, at once."

Huron exited the cell and closed the door of bars behind him.

Dor stood. She found a tall man, face lined with age and wear. He had wavy hair a beard, trimmed short both brown strake with grey. His eyes were light brown. His uniform of blue with white trim bore three sigils. He looked like an older version of Huron.

"Sir. She's the victim. I arrested them both, but that's because it was faster and easier. If I had taken the time to single out the true aggressor, this girl would probably have been killed."

"Hmm." Sir Ives looked from Huron to Dor and back. His expression softened a fraction. "That's to be decided at the hearing."

Huron saluted. "Yes, sir."

"Bring her. The other one requires more attendants." Sir Ives turned and left, his gait stiff and measured as though marching.

Huron sighed.

"All right, miss. Put your stand up, turn around, and put your hands behind your back. Please."

"What? You mean the hearing is now?"

He nodded.

"That was fast."

"Justice does not wait. Turn around please, miss."

"Dor."

"What?"

"My name is Dor. It's short for Dorothy." She hung the blanket around her neck like a giant scarf, giving herself a semblance of modesty, then turned and put her hands behind her back.

"Dor. I'm Huron. Pleased to meet you." He wrapped what felt like cloth around her left wrist, then around her right. "This is enchanted with the same aura as the cell. Don't try to use your magic or it will activate. Understand?" He stepped back.

Dor nodded and turned. "Pleasure to meet you too, Huron."

"Huron, my stepmother stole my bracelet. It belonged to my mom, my real mom. Did you find it when you arrested her?"

"I didn't, but I didn't search her. She had to be subdued more… aggressively. She's being held in a different facility. But I can check for you once we get to the courthouse."

He kept a hand on her upper arm as he guided her through the city to the courthouse as its center. It was the largest building in town. Circular, with a colonnaded portico, stone angel statues upon the roof of the portico, armed guards at regular intervals, it made for an impressive building.

Before they reached the portico, their attention, and that of everyone nearby, was drawn by a high, snarling scream. Dor rolled her eyes. She knew the ravings of the evil stepmother and didn't need to look to know it was her. She was bound by the wrists with cloth that glowed white. A leather collar was fastened around her neck and fastened to the collar were four long wooden rods, each held by a soldier, so that they could guide the raving woman to the courthouse without getting too close. The evil stepmother kicked and bucked and raved, so that the soldiers had to struggle to keep her on her feet and moving.

The cloth binding the evil stepmother's wrists suddenly flared, and collapsed, hanging by the leather collar until the soldiers let her fall to the ground.

Dor sighed. "Maybe it would have been easier if I'd just given her the bracelet and let her kill me."

Huron squeezed her arm gently. "Don't say that. The laws of Bant will protect you from her."

The walked around the evil stepmother, who was beginning to rouse from her bout of unconsciousness, and into the courthouse. Huron led her through the halls, his hand still on her upper arm, to a courtroom of marble and wood paneling. The sat on a wooden bench. No one else was in the room.

A few minutes later, guards began to file into the courtroom ahead of the arrival of the evil stepmother, who still raved and fought against her bondage. While Dor and Huron had taken a seat on one of the benches, the evil stepmother was forced to stand at the back of the room, surrounded by several guards in addition to those still holding the poles attached to her collar.

When Sir Ives entered the room, Huron stood and Dor followed suit. All the guards saluted sharply. Even the evil stepmother stopped her raving and stood a little straighter.

"All rise for Sir Leon Ives, Magistrate of Palon, District of Bant," called an elderly bailiff.

Sir Ives sat at his desk. Huron sat and, again, Dor followed his lead.

"The charges are 'dueling in the streets'. Accused, sate your names for the record."

"Ha! Bit me, lawman," the evil stepmother said. The cloth binding her wrists flared and she collapsed again.

Dor stood. "I am Dorothy Alice Wendy Havens."

Sir Ives was looking at the evil stepmother, nonplussed. He shook his head and looked at Dor, and nodded.

When the evil stepmother regained consciousness, he resumed.

"This is a hearing, not a trial. The hearing can end one of three ways. You can plead 'no contest' and accept the sentencing of this court. You can choose to contest the charges against you at which point you'll be assigned an advocate and your trial date will be set. Or, since this is a case of 'dueling in the streets', if both parties agree, you may settle your dispute via trial by combat—

"Trial by combat!" the evil stepmother shouted. "I choose trial by combat!"

"Understand that trial by combat does not absolve you of the charges brought against you, but if your cause is determined to be just, you could be acquired of the charges."

"Your Honor," Huron said. "Miss Havens has told me that this woman is guilty of harassment, theft, assault and battery, and murder. I ask that the court…"

"Are you Miss Havens' advocate now, Huron?" Sir Ives asked.

"I… yes. I volunteer to represent Miss Havens. I'll file official an official suit of complaint in the morning. In the mean time…"

The evil stepmother laughed. "Oh, no need to wait. I did it. I charmed her father and killed him. His blood tasted of fear and cowerdice. Then I beat the little bitch when she wouldn't give me what I wanted. Oh yes, I'm guilty as charged."

Dor was startled at Huron's volunteering to represent her legally, but when the evil stepmother admitted to killing her father, she heard nothing else. She looked at the crazy-eyed, tattoed woman. Her blood roared in her ears. She clenched her right hand in fury.

"Trial by combat," she said.

Huron was dumbstruck. He stared at Dor, mouth agape.

Sir Ives raised an eyebrow at her. "What did you say, Miss Havens?"

"I want trial by combat," Dor repeated.

"No, you can't," Huron said.

Dor frowned at him. "He said I could choose it."

"She's insane. She'll kill you."

"Not if I kill her first."

Sir Ives banged his gavel on the desk. "Very well. You shall be taken to the meditation chamber where you will have the night to reflect. In the morning, you will take your places in the circle. May the righteous find victory." He banged his gavel again.

A woman clad in plate and leather armor, bearing a golden sigil upon her chest, approached them. Huron stood and pulled Dor up by her arm.

"Sir McCaffery," Huron said.

She nodded at him. "I'll take her from here, Huron."

Sir McCaffery, escorted Dor through the halls and down a set fo staris to a small antechamber.

"You make carry only yourself is allowed into the meditation chamber," said the knight. Her voice reminded Dor of Storm's, deep and rich. "You must disrobe and remove any other items. You may retrieve them after the meditation period."

Dor looked down at the tatters of her clothes and chuckled. "I'm not sure I'll want them back."

"In the morning, at the end of the meditation period, you may requisition arms, armor, and supplies for the duel. You may requisition new clothing then, if you like.

"Further, the mediation chamber is enchanted with the same anti-magic aura as the wrist bonds, so I recommend not attempting any magic whilst inside."

Dor turned her back and undressed. With her robe and chemise destroyed, her pack lost, and her bracelet stolen, all she had left were the hose and slippers the Holy Mother had given her, and the blanket she'd acquired in her cell. She undressed quickly before her modesty could stop her, then followed Sir McCaffery to a to hallway with two stone doorways. Sir McCaffery lead her one of the doors and gestured for her to enter.


	14. Bant - Part 2

**10. Bant**

**Part 2**

he meditation chamber was bare stone floor, walls, and ceiling, without adornment but for a full-length mirror on one wall. When Sir Ives had her she'd have the night to reflect, she hadn't thought she'd meant literally.

Without further comment, Sir McCaffery closed the door, and she was alone.

Dor approached the mirror.

The mirror showed her she'd changed. The was a burn scar on her right shoulder where a battledroid had shot her, a star-shaped scar just above her belly button where Baraka had impaled her, another burn scar high on her left thigh where the evil stepmother's fire whip had wrapped around her leg. Where left hand had been was a smooth stump. Though most of her cuts and scrapes had been healed without mark, these remained.

The adventure had left her flawed.

But she also noted that the muscles of her arms and torso and legs were more defined then they'd ever been, that the cast to her expression was confident, that the look in her eye was determined. She turned and looked over her shoulder so that her back was reflected in the mirror. Another burn scar, stretched from her right shoulder to her left hip, but the tattoo of her wings—green, white, and blue—remained unscarred, as though the wings had been untouched by the fire.

So, perhaps the adventure had left her improved as well.

Dor closed her eyes. She did not reach for the spark, she only tried to see it. It stood, along with the window to her manabonds and the mental grimoire on the other side of a brilliant white sheen. She didn't reach for them. She had no desire to be magicked into unconsciousness.

The evil stepmother screamed with rage.

Dor ignored the muted raving of the evil stepmother as she was pushed into her own meditation chamber. When the stone door was closed, the ravings were muted further, nearly inaudible.

Dor breathed a sigh of relief. She was exhausted and wanted to sleep.

How long had it been, she wondered, since she'd slept? She thought about her comfortable bed in the Hufflepuff basement. The evil stepmother hadn't been able to reach her there. Perhaps she should have stayed. Either way, she hadn't slept the night she'd left Hogwarts and ended up in Outworld during Armageddon. She'd fought, been stabbed, woken up, and 'walked next to Air Temple Island, then a battlefield on Narnia, then the shadow of Castlevania. Had her planes-hopping fight with the evil stepmother taken only minutes? It seemed like it'd taken hours, days.

Dor sat on the floor, the stone cool against her bare skin, closed her eyes, and let her mind wander. She wondered if Cyclops had recovered from his gunshot wound. She wondered if Master Yoda had survived Order 66. She wondered if Holy Mother and Nageeta still served on the front lines in Ivalice.

She wondered if the evil stepmother had told the truth when she'd claimed to have killed Twilight Sparkle, the Holy Mother, and Master Yoda.

She wondered about Bradburry's butterfly, the unintended consequences of meddling with the flow of cause and effect. The Doctor did it, and she very much admired the Doctor. Of course, he was a Time Lord. On the other hand, as Amy had said, 'It's just what they're called. It doesn't mean he actually knows what he's doing.' He was pretty good at soccer though. And cricket. She wondered about cricket, a game she'd never understood. It was kind of like baseball, wasn't it? She wondered if the Doctor would be good at baseball.

And she wondered about baseball. Not the sport so much but the movies: _For Love of the Game_, _Bull Durham_, _Field of Dreams. _Her father had loved baseball movies. She wondered if Billy Chapel, Crash Davis, and Ray Kinsella really all looked so much alike. She wondered if she could planeswalk to their versions of Earth to find out.

She drifted off to sleep imagining a deep philosophical conversation between Kevin Costner and Matt Smith on the planet Trenzalore in a snowy cornfield outside a town called…

* * *

In the morning, when Sir McCaffery opened the meditation chamber door, Dor was awake and ready.

"You have one hour to prepare. You may requisition arms, armor, and supplies. Breakfast will be provided if you desire."

Dor's stomach growled.

Sir McCaffery smiled. "I'll have some brought."

Thank you. "And could I get some clothes maybe?" She thought of the wings that had burst from her back and shredded her robe. "Maybe something low in the back?"

"All right."

"And… I don't suppose you know what happened to my mother's bracelet. The evil stepmother, she stole it."

"Huron has filed suit that the bracelet belongs to you. It's currently in evidence safe."

Dor would have preferred to have the bracelet around her wrist. She felt better with it on.

"I should warn you, Ms. Havens, your adversary is in the trial circle already. She paces like a beast from Jund. I think she means to kill you."

_Jund. So the Conflux has happened._

Dor nodded. "She does." The thought made her tremble and she tried to clamp down on it.

When Sir McCaffery returned, she was accompanied by a trio of white-clad young women, one of whom brought a tray of food, the other two brought two small trunks of clothes. Dor thanked them and the left.

"I'll be back when it's time," Sir McCaffery said.

Dor ate first. Despite that her stomach was a hard knot of nerves, her last Hogwarts meal had been long ago. When her hunger was sated, she sifted through the clothes she'd been brought, all in shades of grey, buff, and white. Dor had never been one for fashion, so she selected what she thought would fit: grey panties and chemise, buff pants, and a white dress that was cut low in the back. The clothes were well made if worn. Last she selected a soft pair of leather boots.

Fed and clothed, Dor considred wht came next.

She was afraid. She had suffered Weapon X goons and Federation battledroids and Mortal Kombatants, and they had all frightened her, but the evil stepmother was worse. The evil stepmother had beaten her and starved her and tortured her.

And she'd killed Dor's father.

So despite that the evil stepmother had spanked her and cut her and taunted her with the deaths of those she cared about, despite that the evil stepmother terrified her, despite that the evil stepmother waited for the opportunity to kill her even now, Dor was prepared to face her.

At the door of the meditation chamber, she found one of the white-clad girls.

"I'm ready."

The circle was an ampetheater behind the courthouse, ringed by stepped benches of plain stone. This was a place of one-on-one combat, of glory and honor and chivalry.

Dor stood well back of the entrance of the tunnel that led back to the meditation chambers. She stood in the shadows and watched the evil stepmother pacing and shouting. She wished she hadn't eaten so much for breakfast.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned find Huron hurrying toward her.

"Dorothy! There's a way out. You don't have to go through with this."

Dor felt a leap of elation.

"You can still back down. I looked at the law, it says that the unbeholden are not required to accept a trial by combat and can back out at any time. Well, until the actual trail starts that is. Once you enter the circle it remains active until someone either concedes or…"

"Or dies?"

Huron nodded. "All we have to do is tell my uncle… to tell Sir Ives that you've changed you mind." He grabbed her wrist. "Come on."

Dor let herself be pulled several steps before she stopped and Huron's grip slipped.

"No. I…" She wanted to get out of it, she wanted to ensure her survival. But more than that, she didn't want to be afraid any more. She wanted to stand up to it. "I'm going to go through with it.

"What?"

"She broke into my life and scattered it. I have to stand up to her. It's like when Crash called that bad umpire a cocksucker. Sometimes you just have to let them know you're not going to be pushed around anymore."

"A what?" Huron looked scandalized.

Dor made for the ampitheatre.

Huron grabbed her by the arm to stop her. "Are you sure you're ready for this?" he demanded, concern in his eyes. "That woman is vicious."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Well, what are you going to do?"

Dor pulled out of his grip. "'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.'"

He blinked at her, confused. "I'm trying to save your life, and you're spouting gibberish."

Dor shook her head. "You want me to sneak away. And it's not that I don't see the sense in that. But… but what if Ray Kinsella had never built that ball field, huh? What if Terrance Mann hadn't gone to Iowa? What if Archibald Graham had gotten a real shot at the big leagues? What then? Karen Kinsella would have choked on a hotdog, that's what."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about crushed butterflies. I'm talking about knowing where you belong. I'm talking about the Doctor doing what's right no matter what the Time Lords say. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll go out there and get killed. But maybe I won't. I've learned a lot in a short amount of time. And I've always been good at this game."


	15. Bant - Part 3

**10. Bant**

**Part 3**

The evil stepmother was fast.

Dor had only just stepped into the sun-lit, packed-earth circle surrounded by stone benches when the evil stepmother hurled a lightning bolt at her. It struck Dor in the chest. It burned through her to the dirt-packed ground beneath her. And even as the lightning ripped through her, she felt the shimmering barrier in her mind fall away. The window opened, the spark pulsed, the grimoire opened.

Dor staggered and coughed, stunned to be alive. She pulled hard at her manabonds and while the power came, she was not immediately suffused with the warmth of magic. She missed the bracelet at her wrist. But the power did come, and she shaped it as quickly as she could.

The evil stepmother summoned a spiky, chain-wielding imp, and Dor summoned a white mage in response. The evil stepmother hurdled another lightning bolt, and Dor sheltered behind the carbunkle's power. The evil stepmother summoned a stink of goblins, and Dor blasted them with Cyclops' power.

Dor pulled ateh mana and shaped the æther. She summoned the unicorn wizard, the jedi grandmaster, the cyromantic lin kuei. She unsummoned and counterspelled stunned and disarmed, banished and summoned. She armed herself with wand and lightsaber, drawing and sheathing with magic.

They'd done this dance before.

The evil stepmother summoned wave after wave of screaming, chittering, blood-thirsty minions. Dor, though the eyes and actions of her ætheric constructs, cut them down, pushed them back, eliminated them. And she was winning. She was destroying the evil stepmothers creatures faster than she could summon them. She was countering her spells as she cast them. Dor was controlling the battlefield.

She enchanted herself with Marvel Girl's telepathy, expecting to see the vampiric dragon looming in the evil stepmother's mind. Instead, she found something far worse: the memory of a dragon with a demonic soul, a terrible creature who had terrorized Bant before being banished to Grixis, a creature who had marched on Bant again after the Conflux. Malfegor, Tyrant of Grixis, Horror of Bant. All the goblins and imps and lightning bolts were only a distraction while she built the power to summon an ætheric echo of the demonic dragon.

Dor felt her shoulders itch.

She could hold against the evil stepmother's smaller minions, her own ætheric echoes were cleverer and more powerful, but the great malicious beast looming in the evil stepmother's mind was a much larger problem.

The itching in her shoulders grew. She gave the sensation all the power of her manabonds and let it shape her as she shaped the æther. The wings did not burst from her back, the unfolded. She let the pull her above the fray.

She hovered on white mana, her angelic wings outspread for balance, lightsaber in hand, wand thrust through her belt, when a thick swirling spiral of black smoke and fire burst forth from the evil stepmother, and Malfegor appeared.

Dor winced as the creature's violent appearance sent fire and death through the circle. Her summoned echoes staggered and dissipated. The stone bowl of the amphitheater cracked and people screamed. The form of Malfegor was known in Bant.

He was a four-armed, leather-winged creature with the body and tail of a dragon and the torso of a man. Curling horns adorned his head. Fire spilled from his jaws.

"I killed your father. I starved you and beat you and cut you. I pursued you across the multiverse and still you stand against me." The evil stepmother's words came out of Malfegor's mouth. "And after I kill you, I'm going to paint myself with your blood and level this town and claim the mox bracelet."

Dor swallowed hard. She wanted to say something witty or defiant, but she could think of nothing. Instead, she waited for the creature to attack, lightsaber at the ready.

The demonic dragon took a deep breath, and Dor knew what would come next, but a clarity came over her, and she was not afraid. Like the baneslayer, she knew draconic and demonic powers could not touch her. Like the dawnbringer, she knew she could recall defeated allies.

The fire washed over her like tepid bathwater.

She pulled from the dissipated æther the jedi grandmaster.

And when the demonic dragon prepared to spring upon her, the jedi grandmaster leapt into action, a green blur flipping through the air to wound it deeply. Dor swooped upon the creature and added her own lightsaber wound.

And that was enough. The demonic dragon disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Dor stood next to an ætheric Yoda, wings extended. The evil stepmother knelt in a heap, stunned at how quickly her largest threat had been defeated.

"Yield," Dor demanded.

With an inarticulate scream, the evil stepmother launched herself at Dor. With smooth reaction, Dor stepped forward with the jedi grandmaster and took off the evil stepmother's left arm at the shoulder. Stunned, stumbled by shock, the evil stepmother took another step and fell to her knees, bowing her head.

Dor hefted her lightsaber. She shifted her wings. She wanted to be an avenging angel, to strike down the evil stepmother. But she hesitated. Since the beginning, she wanted to be the hero as opposed to the damsel. But Superman never killed Lex Luthor; Batman never killed the Joker; the Professor never killed Magneto. Tthe heroes, where they could, avoided killing their foes.

She took a step back, and another, and another. She depowered the lightsaber and clipped it to her belt. Keeping an eye on her adversary via the jedi grandmaster, Dor looked around.

The bowl of the amphitheater had been cracked on one side and was mostly empty. The evil stepmother's attack had come so quickly that she hadn't had a chance to look around. She didn't know if the amphitheater had started out mostly empty or if the appearance of Malfegor had caused it.

But halfway down stood a knot of people. At their head was Sir Ives in a dark blue uniform, sword at his hip, sigils upon his chest. Next to him was Huron.

"I'm not going to kill her," Dor said.

Sir Ives nodded. "Very well. And, I must say, admirable. As magistrate—"

Dor was connected to her ætheric constructs. She could feel what they felt, hear what they heard, see what they saw. The jedi grandmaster, ætheric echo of Master Yoda, saw the evil stepmother rise to her feet, a shimmer of magic surrounding her right hand, summoning Kano's dagger.

Dor pulled her wand. "Expelliarmus!" The dagger spun out of the evil stepmother's hand and dissipated. "Stupefy!" The evil stepmother dropped to the ground.

She turned back to Sir Ives, but a shaft of light had interposed itself between her and them. A winged figure, a blurred outline of which she couldn't make out details, shimmered in the light. The angel held out her hand, and in it was a small, golden disc.

_Your mother would be proud._

* * *

After a brief hearing before Sir Ives, and with the testimony of Huron Ives, she was cleared of the charges of 'dueling in the street'. And that evening, a banquet was held in her honor. It wasn't every day someone was granted a sigil by an angel. Apparently word had spread fast for the banquet hall was filled with knights, seers, and sigiled wanting to congratulate her. Despite her elation at defeating the evil stepmother, the banquet was claustrophobic. She had been granted a suite in the magistrate's mansion and begged off the banquet as soon as she could.

The suite was large: a sitting room with a couch and two chairs, a large bedroom, and an adjoining water closet. The bed could easily fit three and had more pillows than she could possibly need. It was larger than her apartment back home.

Alone, Dor flopped onto her back on the bed. She bit back a tear the memory of the apartment and of her father. Since the appearance fo the evil stepmother and the death of her father, she'd been afraid, but now, that fear was gone. She felt light. She felt free.

"I got her for you, dad."

The suite came with a wardrobe of clothing. Dor undressed and pulled a nightie over her head. She looked at the bed, but didn't feel tired. Instead, she was buzzing with excitement and elation. Her father's murderer was imprisoned. She had defeated the evil stepmother in a duel. She'd been granted a sigil by an angel. And planeswalking had become easier. She could go anywhere, do anything.

There was a knock at her door. Dor grabbed a robe from the wardrobe, pulled it on, and answered the door.

Huron stood on the other side, clad in a soft blue tunic and black pants. He had his hands behind his back. His handsome face was cast with uncertainty.

"Hi," said Dor. "I didn't see you at the banquet."

"Ah. No. I find banquets to be a bit…"

"Stifling?"

He smiled. "Precisely. Uh, Dorothy, I came by to… I just wanted to say that you were, uh, amazing today. And I shouldn't have doubted you. And I'm sorry."

Dor smiled. She put her hand on his shoulder and he looked up at her, his light brown eyes like shards of amber. _He really is very handsome,_ she thought, her skin tingling and her tummy tightening.

"Um… thanks," she said.

"You're most welcome."

They stood like for a time, awkwardly waiting for the other to say something.

"Well…" said Dor at the same time Huron said, "I forgot…"

Dor blushed and put her hands behind her back. "Go ahead."

"I brought you something," Huron said. He fished in his pocket and retrieved her mother's bracelet. It shone in the light of the lanterns in the hallway. He held it out to her and she took it, but when she tried to put it on, she was reminded she no longer had her left hand.

"I'm never going to get used to that." Dor said, growling in frustration.

"Here, let me help you." Huron took the bracelet back and gently clasped it about her right wrist. When he finished, he didn't let go of her hand, but held it in both of his.

Dor blushed and bit her lip. Breathing regularly suddenly seemed the most difficult thing in the world.

"Well… I guess that's it. I should be going."

Dor nodded. "All right."

But still they stood there in her doorway, Huron holding her hand like a lost kitten. Then he bent his head over her and kissed it, like a knight greeting a fair maiden. Dor wanted to be the knight, not the maiden, but the kiss made her feel so tingly and excited she decided she didn't care.

He started to step away, but Dor wanted more. She stepped up to Huron, put her hand behind his neck, went up on tip toe, and kissed him full on the mouth. He was surprised and stiff at first, but then his hands went around her waist and he relaxed. Dor reveled in the sudden rush of feeling, of tingling, of thought-clouding euphoria.

When they finished, they were breathing hard, staring at each other, trying to communicate everything with nothing, to ask without speaking, to understand without certainty.

Dor grabbed his hand and pulled him into her room, kicking the door closed behind her.

"Um," he said.

She put her hand on his chest, grabbed a fistful of tunic, and pulled him down to kiss her again. The second was faster than the first, not all-encompassing, but it was nice and it fuelled the rush of excitement coursing through her.

Huron put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her to arm's length.

Confused, Dor blinked at him.

"This, uh, this isn't exactly proper. We… uh…"

Dor shook her head. "I spent nearly half a year being afraid. I'm not afraid anymore, and I couldn't be more excited. I want to… to do things. To live life as fully as I can. I don't give a damn about what's proper or not. I want this. I want you." She let her robe slip off her shoulders and to the floor.

Huron's eyes went wide.

She grabbed his tunic and pulled it over his head. She unbuckled his belt and pulled it through the loops. She unbuttoned his pants and he let them fall to his ankles.

"Well?" she said.

He smiled at her.

Later, Dor reclined on the pillows, letting his warmth mingle with hers. Huron was snuggled up against her side, one arm over her waist. He brushed his fingers across her bracelet.

"What is it?" he asked. "It must be very valuable."

Dor nodded. "It was my mother's. At first I thought it held a spell, but now… I'm pretty sure the gemstones are moxen."

"What's that?"

Dor paused, trying to figure out how to explain in terms that didn't include playing cards. "They're a power source. I can draw mana from them rather than relying on the land around me, or my bonds to lands I've visited. Based on my experience, on my home world, they're very rare and very powerful."

* * *

The prison under the courthouse was enchanted with the best anti-magic auras available. Dor visited every day for a week trying to get answers. But the woman who had killed her father had grown crazier. She raved and cried and beat herself against the stone walls of the cell.

Dor nodded at the guardsman manning the desk.

"Back again?"

"Doesn't hurt to try," she replied.

She went down the stairs and through the door where she bumped into a man dressed in plain clothes wielding a broom. He had a weathered face and blue eyes.

"Oh. Excuse me," Dor said.

"Pardon, miss."

The man bowed his head and hurried on. He said quickly and quietly. A member of the mortar caste, he probably wasn't supposed to talk to her. That was something about Bant Dor disliked.

As she approached the cell, Dor realized that it was awfully quiet. Usually the evil stepmother was making some kind of noise. A sense of certainty came over her, like the reveal of _Ocean's Eleven_. She knew even as she hurried down the hall, what she would find.

The evil stepmother was dead in her cell, strangled with her own prison clothes.

**End Book 1**

* * *

**Form of the Angel **4WWW

Tribal Enchantment—Angel

You have protection from Demons and from Dragons.

At the beginning of your upkeep, you may return a creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield

At the end of each turn, your life total becomes 5.

Creatures without flying can't attack you.


End file.
